Alphabetical versus Random Order
Monday, September 29th, 2008
Listening to one of Jared Spool’s podcasts on User Interface Engineering a while ago he mentioned something that at the time struck me as profound. He said, if we sort something in alphabetical order it’s practically the same as not sorting it at all. And how many times do we, as humans, just take that easy option to sort a list alphabetically and walk away absolved? I’m guilty of that usability sin as charged (yes, this site needs a top to bottom usability / design overhaul)!
When you think about it, of course Jared is right. Alphabetical only works when you’re in certain situations like at a library archive and you know the author or the book title. What about if you just know you want a book on Usability? Or cars? You need more than the alphabet. At that point you’re looking randomly along the shelf or applying other sorting methodologies. And imagine if you went to a website that sold music CDs and all you had was a gigantic alphabetically sorted list of album names. It may as well be a random purge of album names if you’re not exactly sure of what album you want when you arrive.
So it’s a good thing to keep in mind if you’re sorting information – avoid alphabetical ordering except in situations like the author name / book title combination. There are probably other, more human readable, ways to order that will be greatly appreciated by your site users.
