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User interface ideas

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  • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

    Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

    "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

    for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

    "A AND (B OR C)"

    or

    "(A AND B) OR C"

    but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

    This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

    M Offline
    M Offline
    Mark_Wallace
    wrote on last edited by
    #24

    OriginalGriff wrote:

    Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters?

    It's called a "user guide". With screenshots. And don't assume that anything is not worth explaining. Using a new prog can be scary, to people whose jobs depend on their using them properly, so help them gain confidence by explaining every detail in very simple language (i.e. don't use any programming terms). - Show what to click, and explain what it is. - Show how to select, and explain what they're selecting. - Etc.

    I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

    OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
    0
    • M Mark_Wallace

      OriginalGriff wrote:

      Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters?

      It's called a "user guide". With screenshots. And don't assume that anything is not worth explaining. Using a new prog can be scary, to people whose jobs depend on their using them properly, so help them gain confidence by explaining every detail in very simple language (i.e. don't use any programming terms). - Show what to click, and explain what it is. - Show how to select, and explain what they're selecting. - Etc.

      I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

      OriginalGriffO Offline
      OriginalGriffO Offline
      OriginalGriff
      wrote on last edited by
      #25

      The problem with user guides (and I've written enough of 'em) is that people don't read them - and with a good interface they shouldn't need to for most tasks. For example: I learnt to drive a long time ago, but most of last month I spent in a hire car while mine was mended - a brand new Ford Fiesta Diesel. Now, Ford have been around for a long time, and (should) have most things right by now: I've driven enough of their cars over the years to see progress. But I had to stop the car, find the manual, trawl through it and hunt down some information: how to activate the rear window wiper in the rain. Why? Because it is on a stalk that you can't see at all from the drivers normal seated position (it's hidden by one of the "fat bits" of the steering wheel at 10 & 2) and labeled on the top surface so you have to lean all the way forward and far to the left, then look hard right and down to see the pictogram - which isn't a good idea when you're doing 70! :laugh: That's not a "good user interface" because the mechanism you need to use is hidden from you and you have to look it up and remember it instead of seeing a control and pressing it. I'm after the "there's the button, press it" type of UI on this, so they don't have to look in the manual! :laugh:

      This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

      "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
      "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

      M 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • M Matthew Faithfull

        I agree. If the user is going to enter the query in textual expression form they probably don't need it represented in another form by the GUI. The graphical builder can close/grey out at that point. The good thing about the dual approach is discoverability. The user can begin constructing a query with the slow but simple GUI, see how the textual Boolean expression works with &&, ||, ! and the various functions and then cut to exactly what they want by typing it in. Most users will initially ignore the code string being built up for them but will absorb subconsciously and quite effortlessly what &&, || and ! mean. When they later see a Boolean expression they'll understand what it means and they probably won't even know how. It will just be obvious. :)

        "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

        R Offline
        R Offline
        Rob Grainger
        wrote on last edited by
        #26

        I'd strongly suggest using "and", "or", "not" rather than the C-Style symbols. Unless the user is a programmer, there is no reason to assume familiarity with these. Further, in the absence of bit-wise operations, why on earth use "&&"?

        "If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.

        M 1 Reply Last reply
        0
        • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

          The problem with user guides (and I've written enough of 'em) is that people don't read them - and with a good interface they shouldn't need to for most tasks. For example: I learnt to drive a long time ago, but most of last month I spent in a hire car while mine was mended - a brand new Ford Fiesta Diesel. Now, Ford have been around for a long time, and (should) have most things right by now: I've driven enough of their cars over the years to see progress. But I had to stop the car, find the manual, trawl through it and hunt down some information: how to activate the rear window wiper in the rain. Why? Because it is on a stalk that you can't see at all from the drivers normal seated position (it's hidden by one of the "fat bits" of the steering wheel at 10 & 2) and labeled on the top surface so you have to lean all the way forward and far to the left, then look hard right and down to see the pictogram - which isn't a good idea when you're doing 70! :laugh: That's not a "good user interface" because the mechanism you need to use is hidden from you and you have to look it up and remember it instead of seeing a control and pressing it. I'm after the "there's the button, press it" type of UI on this, so they don't have to look in the manual! :laugh:

          This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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          M Offline
          Mark_Wallace
          wrote on last edited by
          #27

          OriginalGriff wrote:

          people don't read them

          Hmm, I've found that not to be true. People only don't read the ones that are written badly, or that are not written from their perspective (one element of that perspective that's often forgotten is "I don't want to read the whole bluddy book! Just tell me which buttons to click and what to fill in to do A!") Most users who tend not to read user guides have anecdotes on how they were doing something the hard way, but found the easy way when browsing the user guide out of boredom (or when looking for something else). My hand is in the air for that one.

          OriginalGriff wrote:

          with a good interface they shouldn't need to for most tasks

          Absolutely. As I say, though, users are people whose salaries depends on their using the product well, and there is a definite fear/nerve/unwillingness to change factor (especially after big updates), which a good user guide can help overcome.

          I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

          1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

            Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

            "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

            for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

            "A AND (B OR C)"

            or

            "(A AND B) OR C"

            but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

            This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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            B Offline
            Behzad Sedighzadeh
            wrote on last edited by
            #28

            You may have used Process Monitor[^]. I think it's Filter UI has one of the best UI ever.

            Behzad

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

              Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

              "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

              for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

              "A AND (B OR C)"

              or

              "(A AND B) OR C"

              but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

              This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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              T Offline
              Tim Schwallie
              wrote on last edited by
              #29

              Depends on the sophistication of the end user. For most end users the paradigm used by PivotViewer is about the limit. For higher end uses, it becomes tough to code and some BI and reporting tools are more what they are after. Who'd want an end user writing queries against an online oltp db? There's my 2 cents.

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                "A AND (B OR C)"

                or

                "(A AND B) OR C"

                but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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                E Offline
                englebart
                wrote on last edited by
                #30

                The users are already familiar with your current filtering so keep that. As they enter each filter, number them: 1. expr_1 At the top of the screen show the expression combinations. 1 1. expr_1 as they add additional filters, assume AND operation, always add ( ) if there is more than one expression. Require N-1 parentheses pairs! Requiring parens means you don't need to educate on order of operations. (1 AND 2) 1. expr_1 2. expr_2 The user can edit this (1 OR 2) 1. expr_1 2. expr_2 If they add another expression, append with AND + parens ((1 OR 2) AND 3) 1. expr_1 2. expr_2 3. expr_3 If you want the parsing to be more complicated, then you could only require parens for each change of operation. e.g. 1 OR 2 OR 3 AND 4 OR 5 OR 6 would require at least 2 parens. OR -> AND -> OR e.g. 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4 AND 5 OR 6 would require at least 1 parens. AND -> OR e.g. 1 AND 2 OR 3 AND 4 OR 5 AND 6 would require 5 parens. AND -> OR -> AND -> OR -> AND e.g. 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4 AND 5 AND 6 would require 0 parens. AND I would implement NOT as a function look that always requires parens NOT( 1 OR 2 ) Matthew Faithfull had a posting similar to this one.

                1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                  Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                  "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                  for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                  "A AND (B OR C)"

                  or

                  "(A AND B) OR C"

                  but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                  This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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                  G Offline
                  GenJerDan
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #31

                  Is is all going in the WHERE clause of an SQL query? If so, don't forget to put a default in first. I usually do WHERE 1=1, then all the AND/OR/LIKE user stuff. Othewise, if the user doesn't pick anything, you end up with something like WHERE ORDER BY, and the server yells at you. ;P

                  YouTube and My Mu[sic], Films and Windows Programs, etc.

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • J Jorgen Andersson

                    Have a look at the DevExpress filter control[^]. You can make the filter as complex as you'd want to, while staying easy to use. Well, as easy as it gets when it can do "everything". It's not that quick to use though I have to say.

                    Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln

                    R Offline
                    R Offline
                    RafagaX
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #32

                    I've found the DevExpress filter control easy yet powerful to use, so it may be worth a try to copy the concept.

                    CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                      Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                      "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                      for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                      "A AND (B OR C)"

                      or

                      "(A AND B) OR C"

                      but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                      This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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                      M Offline
                      Mikhael Loo
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #33

                      I think there is a huge chasm between the Average Joe and a developer. If I had to guess, I would say that the average Joe doesn't want the filtering functionality. If they could get away with it, they would press a big button that says "Do what I Want" and they'd be done. My guess is that what Joe would want instead is a view of the data that was designed specifically for his primary use case scenario(s). In other words, avoid filters the best you can for the average Joe. Understaninding the content and how it is consumed and why is key here. Identify a default functionality that serves the purposes of the user 90+% of the time. Then Devote the whole screen to making that default scenario feel like a kindergartener could do it. Use the language that Joe is already used to hearing around the shop in your design. Then if a power user still needs filters, put that on a different "Advanced" screen. Maybe a power user could build and save other common scenarios for the Average Joe to consume. Getting Joe to learn to program queries via a user interface is not low hanging fruit even if you deliver a killer UX. Hope it's hepful, -Mikhael :)

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                        Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                        "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                        for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                        "A AND (B OR C)"

                        or

                        "(A AND B) OR C"

                        but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                        This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

                        J Offline
                        J Offline
                        Joe Woodbury
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #34

                        OriginalGriff wrote:

                        Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters?

                        No. Seriously, most users simply don't understand a logic series more than two items long; they grasp something like "If A then B", but I've found that they get lost beyond that.

                        1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                          Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                          "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                          for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                          "A AND (B OR C)"

                          or

                          "(A AND B) OR C"

                          but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                          This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

                          T Offline
                          T Offline
                          Tom Clement
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #35

                          I've approached this problem by using a left to right tree structure and a drag and drop palette. See http://www.codeproject.com/script/Membership/Uploads/383127/RuleEditor.png[^]. The nice thing about this approach is that you can read it top to bottom just the way you would describe it in language, it contains no parentheses you need to track and it enables arbitrary boolean combinations. From a behavioral perspective, if you drop a logical operator on an expression, it creates the structure seen at the bottom, with a blank spot for a new field. Clicking on any expression that has a field will bring up an in-place editor for that field type.

                          Tom Clement articles[^]

                          J 1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                            Oooo! That's not bad - a single curly bracket on the LHS "pointing" at the grouping term...

                                     /  A
                                    |
                                    /
                            /  And - 
                            |       \\
                            /       |
                            

                            Or - \ B
                            \
                            |
                            \ C

                            Need a bit of thinking about, but that could work. Not sure how you make it obvious how to add a grouping, but that could work...

                            This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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                            T Offline
                            Tom Clement
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #36

                            See my response here[^]: for an idea of how that might look.

                            Tom Clement articles[^]

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                              Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                              "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                              for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                              "A AND (B OR C)"

                              or

                              "(A AND B) OR C"

                              but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

                              This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

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                              User 4399755
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #37

                              Hello, we designed a clever visualization of logical expressions once. Imagine a a huge pile of sand we poured into a vertical flow of sieves. The sand is the set that is to be filtered. The sieves are the conditions. At each sieve the amount of grains is reduced. When there is an OR-path, the flow forks and of course it lets more grains of sand through. This way the sand ripples down from top to bottom and in the end you have your final set. Sounds really colourful, eh? When you design it, it looses a lot of the original metaphor. But it works astonishingly. We made people create complex filters who usually have problems using google. I can send you a wireframe if you're interested.

                              Jan

                              OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
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                              • U User 4399755

                                Hello, we designed a clever visualization of logical expressions once. Imagine a a huge pile of sand we poured into a vertical flow of sieves. The sand is the set that is to be filtered. The sieves are the conditions. At each sieve the amount of grains is reduced. When there is an OR-path, the flow forks and of course it lets more grains of sand through. This way the sand ripples down from top to bottom and in the end you have your final set. Sounds really colourful, eh? When you design it, it looses a lot of the original metaphor. But it works astonishingly. We made people create complex filters who usually have problems using google. I can send you a wireframe if you're interested.

                                Jan

                                OriginalGriffO Offline
                                OriginalGriffO Offline
                                OriginalGriff
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #38

                                Sounds interesting - anything which helps user understand what they're doing has got to be worth a look! :laugh: I'll send you a private email so you get my address without exposing either of them to public scrutiny.

                                This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre. Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.

                                "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                                "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

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                                • R Rob Grainger

                                  I'd strongly suggest using "and", "or", "not" rather than the C-Style symbols. Unless the user is a programmer, there is no reason to assume familiarity with these. Further, in the absence of bit-wise operations, why on earth use "&&"?

                                  "If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.

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                                  Matthew Faithfull
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #39

                                  I agree, that would be better unless it makes validation against your query language impossible which seems unlikely.

                                  "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

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                                  • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                    Anybody found a "nice" way to get users to create and use complex filters? I have simple filters and they work well: A drop down for Type: Name, and four different classes. If it's the name, then they get a drop down to select "Contains", "Starts with", "Ends with", "Does not contain" and so forth together with a text box. If it's one of three classes, you get a drop down for "Includes all of", "Includes any of", "Includes none of", and "Does not include", together with a dropdown list of valid values. The final class gets just "Is in" and "Is not in" and a dropdown list. All grouped up in a simple control that I feed a list, and it does the filtering. No problems. Now I've had a request for making it more complex:

                                    "Name Contains 'ABCD' AND Class Includes any off <list> OR Otherclass Is not in <AnotherList>"

                                    for example. Coding wise this is a doodle - that's partly why I made a filter control in the first place. It's trying to work out how to present it to an average user so it's easy to create, understand and edit that's giving me problems. I was thinking of a tree of some kind so it's obvious if the example above is

                                    "A AND (B OR C)"

                                    or

                                    "(A AND B) OR C"

                                    but I'm not sure a tree is that obvious to the average joe... Anyone seen a good way? And I'm not after code, just the presentation ideas - so this isn't a programming question! :laugh:

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                                    Yortw
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #40

                                    I don't know if it qualifies as 'nice' or not, but we had a similar problem where we tried several approaches but the one that stuck was using a tree view. The filter rules are setup using controls like you described and then the rule is added to the tree. Each rule is displayed in the tree as the near-English description of the rule (i.e where name is one of 'roy', 'fred'). The basic idea is that rules nested below another row (i.e a child) are and-ed together (with the parent). Rules that are at the same level of the tree are or-ed together with their sibilings. In short, the tree becomes a visual indication of the parentheses. The rules can also be dragged/dropped to reposition within the tree, or copied and pasted between trees in different windows with the same filter control. Double-clicking a rule reloads it for editing. I can't say I'm totally 100% in love with it, but so far our users seem to understand the concept, or do so with just a little training, and it works. I haven't yet seen anything better - even the TFS style grouping of rules in a grid (see work item query construction) seems to confuse a lot of users. Of course the real problem is users are apt to try and build conditions that are beyond their level of comprehension regardless of the UI they're using.

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                                    • T Tom Clement

                                      I've approached this problem by using a left to right tree structure and a drag and drop palette. See http://www.codeproject.com/script/Membership/Uploads/383127/RuleEditor.png[^]. The nice thing about this approach is that you can read it top to bottom just the way you would describe it in language, it contains no parentheses you need to track and it enables arbitrary boolean combinations. From a behavioral perspective, if you drop a logical operator on an expression, it creates the structure seen at the bottom, with a blank spot for a new field. Clicking on any expression that has a field will bring up an in-place editor for that field type.

                                      Tom Clement articles[^]

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                                      Jorgen Andersson
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #41

                                      Nice, this would be a good article. Talking about which, I believe the link in your signature would benefit from an update.

                                      Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln

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                                      • J Jorgen Andersson

                                        Nice, this would be a good article. Talking about which, I believe the link in your signature would benefit from an update.

                                        Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln

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                                        Tom Clement
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #42

                                        I've thought about this Jörgen. Honestly, I think this would be too big for an article. This is a custom drawn editor and quite complex. As currently written, it's very specific to our data model. The most interesting aspect of it that might be share-worthy really is the visual design and most of that is pretty self explanatory. I could be wrong, and I like writing articles. But I don't see how I can do with without doing more work than I'm able to right now. :)

                                        Tom Clement articles[^]

                                        J 1 Reply Last reply
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                                        • T Tom Clement

                                          I've thought about this Jörgen. Honestly, I think this would be too big for an article. This is a custom drawn editor and quite complex. As currently written, it's very specific to our data model. The most interesting aspect of it that might be share-worthy really is the visual design and most of that is pretty self explanatory. I could be wrong, and I like writing articles. But I don't see how I can do with without doing more work than I'm able to right now. :)

                                          Tom Clement articles[^]

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                                          Jorgen Andersson
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #43

                                          Tom Clement wrote:

                                          But I don't see how I can do with without doing more work than I'm able to right now

                                          I know all about that. :)

                                          Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln

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