8 ms·

37signals doesn’t like you sorting stuff. Are you just remaking a spreadsheet?

166 points by nate 15y ago

yesimahuman 15y ago
It's hard to say why the other applications don't have sorting, but I think it's a stretch to think there is some design genius behind it. It could be for pretty mundane reasons. I agree you don't have to reimplement spreadsheet features, but make sure you have a CSV dump if you think your users would appreciate that.
asktell 15y ago
This post highlights the difficulty in making data accessible in a "traditional" web app. One of the most intuitive interfaces for accessing and manipulating tubular data is the spreadsheet, but very few web apps look or behave like a spreadsheet. I would argue that there is an inherent friction between usability and accessibility of information. Adding options to sort, filter, search, or selectively show or hide fields might make data more accessible but result in reduced usability overall. The exact point where the tradeoff happens isn't clear to me, but 37signals tends to err on the side of usability, at the expense of accessibility. Of course, one could argue that in a data-intensive app, accessibility _is_ usability, and vice versa.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
> Why wouldn’t a user just use a spreadsheet then? Spreadsheets are hard to share and hard to version-control, and the data is cumbersome to access programmatically.
- absconditus 15y ago
  Google Docs spreadsheets handle all of these things. I think that it is better to question why developers still create so many simple CRUD applications. Where is the next generation MS Access?
  - msellout 15y ago
    Zoho?
    - absconditus 15y ago
      I am aware of things like Zoho and Oracle Application Express. These mostly seem like MS Access moved to the web, which is not a bad thing. There is obviously another step that needs to be taken to allow a large number of simple CRUD applications to be built by anyone who is technically competent but not a developer.
      - jacques_chester 15y ago
        My day job is using Application Express. And yes, it's explainable as an Access-for-websites, backed by an Oracle database.
      - tfb 15y ago
        I've actually been working on exactly this for quite some time now. You can check it out at http://loggur.com http://loggur.com. I should note that a number of things are currently disabled on the site (like the mobile version and invite referrals), but the current information on the site should give an idea where Loggur's headed. A few things are disabled because just last week I decided to convert the entire backend to Node, mainly for Socket.io... because the idea is to let users edit and use apps together in real time... probably using a turn-based system or variations thereof. I was going to wait until after beta release to do this but decided it would probably save a lot of time and effort in the long run to knock it out while the code base is relatively small. And I actually just now (re)hacked together the invitation system right after I saw your comment. Gotta seize the opportunity, even if it only means another 5-10 sign-ups! The plan was to wait until after the app builder is complete and use Loggur to build Loggur (i.e., recreate the majority of the current site), as it wouldn't take long at all; but the opportunity came up to do a shameless plug. And I thought I was done coding for the day!
        bdunn 15y ago
_delirium 15y ago
Some of the stuff they do isn't that far from sorting. The screenshot where you can filter to "last 7 days", "last 30 days", etc. is a discretized alternative to sorting by age that then doesn't sort within the discrete buckets. May or may not be a better UI; depends on what people use it for and what people would've used sorting-by-age for.
- sjs 15y ago
  Most would call that a filter, not a sort.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    It's a filter, yes, but a filter based on picking different cutoff points in an ordered column: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc. I often find myself using these things as a roundabout way to sort a column, where first I get the last 7 days, then the last 30 and skip the ones I'd already seen, etc. Though it really depends on the app whether users would do that. I recall doing that most recently on an apartment-search site that offered that kind of filter but no sorting: I wanted to see the most recent listings, so first I saw the most recent listings, then loosened the filter to the next-most-recent category, etc. Would've just preferred a Craigslist style sort so I could continue scrolling down instead of doing the filter-loosening thing.
petejansson 15y ago
It's a really good idea to question the fundamentals of presentation. People, however, are really good at looking at tables and detecting patterns (at least, according to Tufte), and, since we're unlikely to anticipate all the ways people will use data, it's a good idea to make sure that, in addition to the good ideas we come up with, we give users options to muck with data to their heart's content.
- DougBTX 15y ago
  we give users options to muck with data to their heart's content The answer there is probably to let the users pick their own tools too. If someone wants to chart data in your system for a PowerPoint presentation, the answer might be to give them a CSV export, instead of building a chart drawing tool into your application. (Of course, that assumes that your monetization strategy doesn't rest on restricting access to your data...)
- jrockway 15y ago
  Are you sure that people are good at finding patterns in tables? If I give you: x = {1..5} and y = {3.0982, 3.3928, 3.8838, 4.5712, 5.45500} can you tell if that's linear, quadratic, or something else? Probably not. But if I show you a graph: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.0982*x**2%2B3 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.0982*x**2%2B3 it becomes pretty obvious. A table is not the right way to display this data.
  - anothermachine 15y ago
    Sure, graphs are often better than tables. That's not relevant to the point of whether tables should be sortable, if you already provide a table for some reason. A more relevant task: Given the data 3 3.88 5 5.45 1 3.09 2 3.39 4 4.57 Can you tell if the columns are correlated? With sorting, you can, easily.
bakhlawa 15y ago
This may just be a case of giving credit where none was necessarily due. The absence of sort may just be a victim of 37signal's own design philosophy of only including features that users want and repeatedly request thus causing them to float to the top of the queue. In the grand scheme of things, High Rise and Base Camp users probably have other more pressing feature requests / complaints that they would rather get implemented pronto.
pinaceae 15y ago
ha, I would wager that there is a simpler reason: sortable tables in HTML are nearly impossible to implement. once you have a lot of data, you want fixed column headers. stacked sorting (column A first, then B), a lot of things suddenly become needed additions. and where do you sort? front end or back end? how much data are processing? just look at google spreadsheets and you'll see how sub-optimal it is.
- mattadams 15y ago
  Data tables (jQuery addon) does a pretty good job with HTML tables.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    If you can push all your data to the front-end all at once, yes. DataTables makes this pretty straightforward. Otherwise, his point stands. DataTables has hooks for this stuff, of course, but that's just a way of saying "DataTables doesn't itself solve this problem".
    - arethuza 15y ago
      I rather like the fact that DataTables doesn't try and solve the whole problem (front end and server back end) - otherwise you end up with things like ASP.Net server controls and DataGrids which are really just an attempt to port desktop development approaches to the web - creating an unpleasantly leaky abstraction along the way. I find that using DataTables as front end and hooking it up to a backend is pretty straightforward and results in a nice separation of concerns - let the server/database worry about paging, sorting, searching and filtering. Of course, if you have a relatively small amount of rows then just let DataTables do all the work - but at least you have the choice.
    - irahul 15y ago
      > If you can push all your data to the front-end all at once, yes. DataTables makes this pretty straightforward. Paginagtion(ajax or page reload takes care of it). I use slickgrid https://github.com/mleibman/SlickGrid https://github.com/mleibman/SlickGrid; pagination is straight forward, filtering takes some work. But do the hook once, and wrap the table in jquery-ui css framework's ui-widget, and you have a good looking, working table. > but that's just a way of saying "DataTables doesn't itself solve this problem". slickgrid is sortable, but filtering needs work. In fact, "slickgrid doesn't do everything" is part of its philosophy. I have come to opposite conclusion that of author's. Having an excel sheet replacement in your repertoire is important, especially when you are replacing enterprisy stuff.
naner 15y ago
I love sorting and filtering. When I'm looking for something, I often remember where it is by different criteria (date last visited, date saved, keywords, frequency of use, numerically, alphabetically, etc) so I get frustrated when my options are limited. But I do understand why designers want to do without. I hate even more when things are sorted badly. For a long time Google Bookmarks were sorted alphabetically by default. Every single time I went looking for an old bookmark, I'd navigate to the Google bookmarks page and then I'd have to click on 'Date' and then on 'Bookmarks'. (Random tweets and other nonsense was included with my bookmarks by default, too. You had to choose 'Bookmarks' to view only your bookmarks.) 99.9999% of the time you're looking for a recent bookmark, not one that begins with a zero or 'a'. To this day I'm baffled as to what confusion of ideas lead to that interface. They fixed this in the December 19th update/redesign but I'm sure it persisted for at least a couple of years.
- vladsanchez 15y ago
  fck, finally! I've complained about this same issue for years! Thank God is Christmas! :P
sunchild 15y ago
In my opinion, Google put the search vs. sort debate to rest a long time ago. For large, multifaceted datasets, search with faceted filters is almost always the right approach (again IMO).
- dman 15y ago
  Only for data that is subjective - given a search term which site is most relevant? Who knows. But for questions like - allow me to examine the cost-distance-availability of hotels sorting is essential.
  - sherwin 15y ago
    And indeed, Google is moving in this direction: they are increasingly returning inline results for factual (less subjective) data. E.g., https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=beethoven+birthdate https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...
- dmlorenzetti 15y ago
  Was there ever a serious "debate" regarding search versus sort? They clearly complement each other. Google, by failing to support meaningful sorts, removes a convenient way to access information. For example, in my old mail system, I could often home in on a particular message by sorting the relevant messages by size (simple communications < code exchanges < zip files containing all project files). Gmail's search-only approach-- while no doubt theoretically pleasing to a company that cut its teeth on search-- feels like half an implementation to me.
  - sunchild 15y ago
    I can't argue with that. To be more precise than my original post, Google may not be the best example here, since it implicitly sorts based on the vague notion of relevance, which is where the magic lives. I'll amend my original point to include an implied sort order that aims to please "most of the people most of the time".
- 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
endeavor 15y ago
37signals is pretty dogmatic about their design: what features _37signals_ believes their products should and shouldn't have. Just because they don't have the feature doesn't mean lots of users don't want it. Furthermore, sorting large data sets is a huge performance challenge. I think that's the main reason why you don't see it in Gmail. Not because sorting is not desired.
nknight 15y ago
Providing obvious, useful functionality has no more relationship to the concept of a cargo cult than providing a cup holder in a car. Don't deny your users the 80% (more like 99%) case just because there's a complicated tool out there that, with a bunch of bloat and UX problems, can also provide the 20% (1%) case.
- dextorious 15y ago
  He actually proved the opposite, that sorting functionality in such apps is far from "obvious and useful". 37Signals doesn't provide it in widely used apps, and very few are complaining. So sorting is more like the 20% 1% case.
- plinio_silva 15y ago
  Following whatever 37signals does is what seems like cargo cult. They do so many things wrong, and yet designers like this come and say "If they are doing it that way then it must be the right way".
mycodebreaks 15y ago
is this what's called minimalist design?
smackfu 15y ago
Sorting is useful when order is more relevant than the exact results. Many sites just throw away this use case, because it's inconvenient.
tomkarlo 15y ago
Sorting in a paged list (as seen on most web pages) isn't very useful unless you intend to page through the whole list. If you're only going to look at one page, you're probably better off with a search for the attribute(s) you're looking for rather than trying to find a sort that puts those results up top. Developers love to put in sort controls because they cover lots of use cases and don't take a lot of thought to implement. And mentally, they tend to think about sorting a lot anyway. But my experience with looking at data from non-developer users has always been that they rarely use sort options when available (and search filters, either, btw. ) You see about 5% of users employing those controls. So the developers think they've solved certain use cases by providing sorting, and users don't see those cases as covered, because they don't see that they can use sort to solve them. It's better to just not put in sort, reduce complexity and find other ways to cover those cases that users are more likely to employ.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  I am quite sure you have fallen into the Google group think of no sorting + no folders. Every time someone at google has the balls to challenge that dogma, like replacing "add label" with "move to" in Gmail, correct usage soars. The search & labels only fallacy has led to some terrible interfaces, such as the Google Docs home page.
  - tomkarlo 15y ago
    I'm quite sure you're wrong on that, since I know exactly how we reached that conclusion despite originally thinking otherwise. I worked on the issue at another major net company where we were dealing with a _lot_ of lists being viewed by very large numbers of users. While I'm unfamiliar with the results of research at Google, both analytics of production services and follow-up user labs showed very little traction for using sort to reorganize sets of information among non-technical users. It's just not how regular people think about manipulating information - in the real world, sorting a set of any interesting size is impractical if not painful. You can literally ask a loaded question - "is there any way you could sort those to make XYZ easier?" and folks will avoid that in favor of other method.
phzbOx 15y ago
I remember a place where I worked where they'd show users a big table with dozen of statistical numbers and percents everywhere. I kept saying to just show one number (The relevent %) because users didn't care about all these numbers. In fact, it'd make everything harder to understand. But, "the leay way says to do something and iterate based on feedback" they said. So, a couple of months and iterations later, it was all redesigned with a single number: the important percent. A trick to help focus on the important stuff is to ask: "If I ask a user that doesn't care at all about my product and is extremely busy, what should I show to make it interesting (Or convenient)?"
polychrome 15y ago
You've made some good points. I don't know how complex your data set is, so just remember that if you have an extremely complex set of data, give me the user a way to find something based on different criteria. If an item has a date, a number, attachments, etc give me a way to sort through them so that when I kinda know what I'm looking for I can find it.
nabilt 15y ago
I'm developing an electronic parts inventory web app because I needed a better way catalog, order and share parts. I couldn't think of a better way than a spreadsheet to display the dozens of parts a user might have. Each part has an ID from the schematic, name, value and description which are displayed using a dojo data grid (Very happy with dojo grid btw). The rest of the attributes are hidden until the user needs them. There is a lot of data and comparisons being done and spreadsheets, it seems, were my only choice. The electronics industry hasn't solved this either. Take a look how ugly and overwhelming the product search is from Digikey, Mouser or Newark.
dogas 15y ago
I think the author is missing the point. Some data just looks and acts beautifully in tabular / spreadsheet form, and if you have an app where that is the case, then by all means, use a tabular layout. Does that mean you are just remaking a spreadsheet? Cmon. No. There is all sorts of added value for using a webapp that has a tabular data view. Maybe it's nicer to use. Maybe it comes with choices pre-filled out for you for certain columns. Maybe you provide user/team visibility, or sharing, or all sorts of other stuff that a simple spreadsheet could never provide standalone. The point is, don't shoot yourself in the foot because 37signals forgot to put a tabular view of their data in. That means nothing. You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? Yes? Great, then provide a tabular view for your users.
- robomc 15y ago
  Yeah, this is a stubborn hipster design decision, which the post author is trying to propagate through hero worship.
- _sh 15y ago
  > You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up. I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.
espeed 15y ago
You could embed a Google Spreadsheet (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in-google-spreadsheets.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in-goo...) and use Google Apps Script to feed it data from your database (http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreadsheet.html http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreads...). Here's an example of how to connect a Google Spreadsheet to Neo4j running on Heroku (http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and-google.html http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and-go...).
gautaml 15y ago
I'd rather be allowed to choose rather than forced to accept That's one problem I see with UX/UI designers; sometimes they don't really think about what the end user wants. And this statement is just bull-crap: "All this got me thinking about if I’m truly designing a solution to a problem if all I’m doing is replicating the features of a spreadsheet in a web app. Why wouldn’t a user just use a spreadsheet then?" Because you're building an application not a spreadsheet viewer.

166 points by nate 15y ago

It's hard to say why the other applications don't have sorting, but I think it's a stretch to think there is some design genius behind it. It could be for pretty mundane reasons. I agree you don't have to reimplement spreadsheet features, but make sure you have a CSV dump if you think your users would appreciate that.

asktell 15y ago

This post highlights the difficulty in making data accessible in a "traditional" web app. One of the most intuitive interfaces for accessing and manipulating tubular data is the spreadsheet, but very few web apps look or behave like a spreadsheet. I would argue that there is an inherent friction between usability and accessibility of information. Adding options to sort, filter, search, or selectively show or hide fields might make data more accessible but result in reduced usability overall. The exact point where the tradeoff happens isn't clear to me, but 37signals tends to err on the side of usability, at the expense of accessibility. Of course, one could argue that in a data-intensive app, accessibility _is_ usability, and vice versa.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

> Why wouldn’t a user just use a spreadsheet then? Spreadsheets are hard to share and hard to version-control, and the data is cumbersome to access programmatically.

absconditus 15y ago
Google Docs spreadsheets handle all of these things. I think that it is better to question why developers still create so many simple CRUD applications. Where is the next generation MS Access?
- msellout 15y ago
  Zoho?
  - absconditus 15y ago
    I am aware of things like Zoho and Oracle Application Express. These mostly seem like MS Access moved to the web, which is not a bad thing. There is obviously another step that needs to be taken to allow a large number of simple CRUD applications to be built by anyone who is technically competent but not a developer.
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      My day job is using Application Express. And yes, it's explainable as an Access-for-websites, backed by an Oracle database.
    - tfb 15y ago
      I've actually been working on exactly this for quite some time now. You can check it out at http://loggur.com http://loggur.com. I should note that a number of things are currently disabled on the site (like the mobile version and invite referrals), but the current information on the site should give an idea where Loggur's headed. A few things are disabled because just last week I decided to convert the entire backend to Node, mainly for Socket.io... because the idea is to let users edit and use apps together in real time... probably using a turn-based system or variations thereof. I was going to wait until after beta release to do this but decided it would probably save a lot of time and effort in the long run to knock it out while the code base is relatively small. And I actually just now (re)hacked together the invitation system right after I saw your comment. Gotta seize the opportunity, even if it only means another 5-10 sign-ups! The plan was to wait until after the app builder is complete and use Loggur to build Loggur (i.e., recreate the majority of the current site), as it wouldn't take long at all; but the opportunity came up to do a shameless plug. And I thought I was done coding for the day!
      - bdunn 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago

Some of the stuff they do isn't that far from sorting. The screenshot where you can filter to "last 7 days", "last 30 days", etc. is a discretized alternative to sorting by age that then doesn't sort within the discrete buckets. May or may not be a better UI; depends on what people use it for and what people would've used sorting-by-age for.

sjs 15y ago
Most would call that a filter, not a sort.
- _delirium 15y ago
  It's a filter, yes, but a filter based on picking different cutoff points in an ordered column: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc. I often find myself using these things as a roundabout way to sort a column, where first I get the last 7 days, then the last 30 and skip the ones I'd already seen, etc. Though it really depends on the app whether users would do that. I recall doing that most recently on an apartment-search site that offered that kind of filter but no sorting: I wanted to see the most recent listings, so first I saw the most recent listings, then loosened the filter to the next-most-recent category, etc. Would've just preferred a Craigslist style sort so I could continue scrolling down instead of doing the filter-loosening thing.

petejansson 15y ago

It's a really good idea to question the fundamentals of presentation. People, however, are really good at looking at tables and detecting patterns (at least, according to Tufte), and, since we're unlikely to anticipate all the ways people will use data, it's a good idea to make sure that, in addition to the good ideas we come up with, we give users options to muck with data to their heart's content.

DougBTX 15y ago
we give users options to muck with data to their heart's content The answer there is probably to let the users pick their own tools too. If someone wants to chart data in your system for a PowerPoint presentation, the answer might be to give them a CSV export, instead of building a chart drawing tool into your application. (Of course, that assumes that your monetization strategy doesn't rest on restricting access to your data...)
jrockway 15y ago
Are you sure that people are good at finding patterns in tables? If I give you: x = {1..5} and y = {3.0982, 3.3928, 3.8838, 4.5712, 5.45500} can you tell if that's linear, quadratic, or something else? Probably not. But if I show you a graph: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.0982*x**2%2B3 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.0982*x**2%2B3 it becomes pretty obvious. A table is not the right way to display this data.
- anothermachine 15y ago
  Sure, graphs are often better than tables. That's not relevant to the point of whether tables should be sortable, if you already provide a table for some reason. A more relevant task: Given the data 3 3.88 5 5.45 1 3.09 2 3.39 4 4.57 Can you tell if the columns are correlated? With sorting, you can, easily.

bakhlawa 15y ago

This may just be a case of giving credit where none was necessarily due. The absence of sort may just be a victim of 37signal's own design philosophy of only including features that users want and repeatedly request thus causing them to float to the top of the queue. In the grand scheme of things, High Rise and Base Camp users probably have other more pressing feature requests / complaints that they would rather get implemented pronto.

pinaceae 15y ago

ha, I would wager that there is a simpler reason: sortable tables in HTML are nearly impossible to implement. once you have a lot of data, you want fixed column headers. stacked sorting (column A first, then B), a lot of things suddenly become needed additions. and where do you sort? front end or back end? how much data are processing? just look at google spreadsheets and you'll see how sub-optimal it is.

mattadams 15y ago
Data tables (jQuery addon) does a pretty good job with HTML tables.
- tptacek 15y ago
  If you can push all your data to the front-end all at once, yes. DataTables makes this pretty straightforward. Otherwise, his point stands. DataTables has hooks for this stuff, of course, but that's just a way of saying "DataTables doesn't itself solve this problem".
  - arethuza 15y ago
    I rather like the fact that DataTables doesn't try and solve the whole problem (front end and server back end) - otherwise you end up with things like ASP.Net server controls and DataGrids which are really just an attempt to port desktop development approaches to the web - creating an unpleasantly leaky abstraction along the way. I find that using DataTables as front end and hooking it up to a backend is pretty straightforward and results in a nice separation of concerns - let the server/database worry about paging, sorting, searching and filtering. Of course, if you have a relatively small amount of rows then just let DataTables do all the work - but at least you have the choice.
  - irahul 15y ago
    > If you can push all your data to the front-end all at once, yes. DataTables makes this pretty straightforward. Paginagtion(ajax or page reload takes care of it). I use slickgrid https://github.com/mleibman/SlickGrid https://github.com/mleibman/SlickGrid; pagination is straight forward, filtering takes some work. But do the hook once, and wrap the table in jquery-ui css framework's ui-widget, and you have a good looking, working table. > but that's just a way of saying "DataTables doesn't itself solve this problem". slickgrid is sortable, but filtering needs work. In fact, "slickgrid doesn't do everything" is part of its philosophy. I have come to opposite conclusion that of author's. Having an excel sheet replacement in your repertoire is important, especially when you are replacing enterprisy stuff.

naner 15y ago

I love sorting and filtering. When I'm looking for something, I often remember where it is by different criteria (date last visited, date saved, keywords, frequency of use, numerically, alphabetically, etc) so I get frustrated when my options are limited. But I do understand why designers want to do without. I hate even more when things are sorted badly. For a long time Google Bookmarks were sorted alphabetically by default. Every single time I went looking for an old bookmark, I'd navigate to the Google bookmarks page and then I'd have to click on 'Date' and then on 'Bookmarks'. (Random tweets and other nonsense was included with my bookmarks by default, too. You had to choose 'Bookmarks' to view only your bookmarks.) 99.9999% of the time you're looking for a recent bookmark, not one that begins with a zero or 'a'. To this day I'm baffled as to what confusion of ideas lead to that interface. They fixed this in the December 19th update/redesign but I'm sure it persisted for at least a couple of years.

vladsanchez 15y ago
fck, finally! I've complained about this same issue for years! Thank God is Christmas! :P

sunchild 15y ago

In my opinion, Google put the search vs. sort debate to rest a long time ago. For large, multifaceted datasets, search with faceted filters is almost always the right approach (again IMO).

dman 15y ago
Only for data that is subjective - given a search term which site is most relevant? Who knows. But for questions like - allow me to examine the cost-distance-availability of hotels sorting is essential.
- sherwin 15y ago
  And indeed, Google is moving in this direction: they are increasingly returning inline results for factual (less subjective) data. E.g., https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=beethoven+birthdate https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...
dmlorenzetti 15y ago
Was there ever a serious "debate" regarding search versus sort? They clearly complement each other. Google, by failing to support meaningful sorts, removes a convenient way to access information. For example, in my old mail system, I could often home in on a particular message by sorting the relevant messages by size (simple communications < code exchanges < zip files containing all project files). Gmail's search-only approach-- while no doubt theoretically pleasing to a company that cut its teeth on search-- feels like half an implementation to me.
- sunchild 15y ago
  I can't argue with that. To be more precise than my original post, Google may not be the best example here, since it implicitly sorts based on the vague notion of relevance, which is where the magic lives. I'll amend my original point to include an implied sort order that aims to please "most of the people most of the time".
15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

endeavor 15y ago

37signals is pretty dogmatic about their design: what features _37signals_ believes their products should and shouldn't have. Just because they don't have the feature doesn't mean lots of users don't want it. Furthermore, sorting large data sets is a huge performance challenge. I think that's the main reason why you don't see it in Gmail. Not because sorting is not desired.

nknight 15y ago

Providing obvious, useful functionality has no more relationship to the concept of a cargo cult than providing a cup holder in a car. Don't deny your users the 80% (more like 99%) case just because there's a complicated tool out there that, with a bunch of bloat and UX problems, can also provide the 20% (1%) case.

dextorious 15y ago
He actually proved the opposite, that sorting functionality in such apps is far from "obvious and useful". 37Signals doesn't provide it in widely used apps, and very few are complaining. So sorting is more like the 20% 1% case.
plinio_silva 15y ago
Following whatever 37signals does is what seems like cargo cult. They do so many things wrong, and yet designers like this come and say "If they are doing it that way then it must be the right way".

mycodebreaks 15y ago

is this what's called minimalist design?

smackfu 15y ago

Sorting is useful when order is more relevant than the exact results. Many sites just throw away this use case, because it's inconvenient.

tomkarlo 15y ago

Sorting in a paged list (as seen on most web pages) isn't very useful unless you intend to page through the whole list. If you're only going to look at one page, you're probably better off with a search for the attribute(s) you're looking for rather than trying to find a sort that puts those results up top. Developers love to put in sort controls because they cover lots of use cases and don't take a lot of thought to implement. And mentally, they tend to think about sorting a lot anyway. But my experience with looking at data from non-developer users has always been that they rarely use sort options when available (and search filters, either, btw. ) You see about 5% of users employing those controls. So the developers think they've solved certain use cases by providing sorting, and users don't see those cases as covered, because they don't see that they can use sort to solve them. It's better to just not put in sort, reduce complexity and find other ways to cover those cases that users are more likely to employ.

jcampbell1 15y ago
I am quite sure you have fallen into the Google group think of no sorting + no folders. Every time someone at google has the balls to challenge that dogma, like replacing "add label" with "move to" in Gmail, correct usage soars. The search & labels only fallacy has led to some terrible interfaces, such as the Google Docs home page.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  I'm quite sure you're wrong on that, since I know exactly how we reached that conclusion despite originally thinking otherwise. I worked on the issue at another major net company where we were dealing with a _lot_ of lists being viewed by very large numbers of users. While I'm unfamiliar with the results of research at Google, both analytics of production services and follow-up user labs showed very little traction for using sort to reorganize sets of information among non-technical users. It's just not how regular people think about manipulating information - in the real world, sorting a set of any interesting size is impractical if not painful. You can literally ask a loaded question - "is there any way you could sort those to make XYZ easier?" and folks will avoid that in favor of other method.

phzbOx 15y ago

I remember a place where I worked where they'd show users a big table with dozen of statistical numbers and percents everywhere. I kept saying to just show one number (The relevent %) because users didn't care about all these numbers. In fact, it'd make everything harder to understand. But, "the leay way says to do something and iterate based on feedback" they said. So, a couple of months and iterations later, it was all redesigned with a single number: the important percent. A trick to help focus on the important stuff is to ask: "If I ask a user that doesn't care at all about my product and is extremely busy, what should I show to make it interesting (Or convenient)?"

polychrome 15y ago

You've made some good points. I don't know how complex your data set is, so just remember that if you have an extremely complex set of data, give me the user a way to find something based on different criteria. If an item has a date, a number, attachments, etc give me a way to sort through them so that when I kinda know what I'm looking for I can find it.

nabilt 15y ago

I'm developing an electronic parts inventory web app because I needed a better way catalog, order and share parts. I couldn't think of a better way than a spreadsheet to display the dozens of parts a user might have. Each part has an ID from the schematic, name, value and description which are displayed using a dojo data grid (Very happy with dojo grid btw). The rest of the attributes are hidden until the user needs them. There is a lot of data and comparisons being done and spreadsheets, it seems, were my only choice. The electronics industry hasn't solved this either. Take a look how ugly and overwhelming the product search is from Digikey, Mouser or Newark.

dogas 15y ago

I think the author is missing the point. Some data just looks and acts beautifully in tabular / spreadsheet form, and if you have an app where that is the case, then by all means, use a tabular layout. Does that mean you are just remaking a spreadsheet? Cmon. No. There is all sorts of added value for using a webapp that has a tabular data view. Maybe it's nicer to use. Maybe it comes with choices pre-filled out for you for certain columns. Maybe you provide user/team visibility, or sharing, or all sorts of other stuff that a simple spreadsheet could never provide standalone. The point is, don't shoot yourself in the foot because 37signals forgot to put a tabular view of their data in. That means nothing. You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? Yes? Great, then provide a tabular view for your users.

robomc 15y ago
Yeah, this is a stubborn hipster design decision, which the post author is trying to propagate through hero worship.
_sh 15y ago
> You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up. I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.

espeed 15y ago

You could embed a Google Spreadsheet (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in-google-spreadsheets.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in-goo...) and use Google Apps Script to feed it data from your database (http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreadsheet.html http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreads...). Here's an example of how to connect a Google Spreadsheet to Neo4j running on Heroku (http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and-google.html http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and-go...).

gautaml 15y ago

I'd rather be allowed to choose rather than forced to accept That's one problem I see with UX/UI designers; sometimes they don't really think about what the end user wants. And this statement is just bull-crap: "All this got me thinking about if I’m truly designing a solution to a problem if all I’m doing is replicating the features of a spreadsheet in a web app. Why wouldn’t a user just use a spreadsheet then?" Because you're building an application not a spreadsheet viewer.