3 ms·

how is discoverability 100% if you - can't search - don't have 100% functionality

• torstenvl 3y ago
  Search is the opposite of discoverability for all the reasons covered in this thread and in the OP.
  • eviks 3y ago
    The OP doesn't make this absurd claim (search is how you discover things, it can't be the opposite)
    • pbhjpbhj 3y ago
      Search is how you find things you know are there. Discoverability is the measure of how well an application presents features to you that you didn't necessarily know were there. A menu may be a list of features, when you open the menu you discover those features. A search box is a box. It shows no features. Search results might show features but those features might also not relate at all to the task you're doing, which means they're out of context. That's extremely poor discoverability. You can find all the features, you can't discover them.
    • torstenvl 3y ago
      Forgive me, but you must have only skimmed the OP. It is quite explicit. > [Search] kinda works when you generally know what you need or how a feature you want could be called. But really not when this is your first rodeo.
      • kazinator 3y ago
        Will a web page be discoverable if its server blocks all search-related robots? Now if search were the only means of discovery, that would be bad. Imagine if no two pages linked together: everything had to be found in an index. That's a strawman though. Search complements other modes of discovery. How about REdiscoverability. You remember some feature in the program and some words related to it, but ... where the heck was it? Search can help.
        • torstenvl 3y ago
          Just to be clear: (a) what percentage of web pages do you think can be found by a person using a search engine, without specific prior knowledge of the content? (b) do you believe an application in which the same percentage of features are discoverable has acceptable discoverability?
          • kazinator 3y ago
            If we are not talking about issues (that don't apply to UI search) like pages being low-ranked out of existence, I would say all pages are discoverable through search. In the sense that, for instance, if I find a great Greek restaurant I didn't know existed, that counts as discovery, even though I already know Greek food and was searching for that.
            • deleted 3y ago
              [deleted]
      • eviks 3y ago
        That's the sentence I thought you meant, but you're just reading it wrong. This doesn't support your radical statement. "General knowledge of what you wantl is perfectly fine and doesn't block discoverability, that's also how you discover a lot of things on the web It's also wrong, for example, you can discover all the file operations by typing in "file" in the search box even if it's your first rodeo Also, search box can list all the commands as some commands palettes do in other apps, so you can just scroll to discover 100% of listed commands. It can also show categories, that's, for example, how I discover 100% of commands for some plugin by typing its name and reading the list of commands in the search results Btw, this problem doesn't go away with the menu (like mentioned in another thread): it's hard to discover by looking through a huge nested list, especially when this list is poorly organized like in Gimp, and incomplete, and not context dependent So no, search is on the same side of discoverability, and the op doesn't claim otherwise, that's your mistaken interpretation
        • torstenvl 3y ago
          Dishonesty is not acceptable behavior, nor is being coy and snarky. If that's the sentence you thought I meant, then pretending you didn't know what I was talking about was a lie and you should find somewhere other than HN to hang out.
          • eviks 3y ago
            So why were you being coy in your reference then? And it's rather dishonest to conflate knowledge with a guess (by the way, I still don't know which part of "this thread" you meant, I didn't find another statement like yours)
    • akasakahakada 3y ago
      >>> search is how you discover things So you mean that I should loop through [a-zA-Z0-9]* to search which name is defined so that I can use that function? What pills do you take, I want them.
      • eviks 3y ago
        Take a sugar pill and use the rush to use at least one modern app with a command palette, you should hopefully understand the nonsense of your a-z claim before the effects wear off
• ColonelPhantom 3y ago
  GIMP does have search, just hit / and you can find any action. The problem with search and discoverability is that search requires input from me, whereas discoverability means that the program explicitly offers its features to me. With search, I would never discover some handy new feature I wouldn't think of myself, or something that is named differently than I expect. Hunting through a menu, while not optimal, allows me to view a 'catalog' of all the features.
  • Shish2k 3y ago
    > a 'catalog' of all the features. A “menu”, if you will ;)
  • eviks 3y ago
    I meant search in the menu itself like Mac does The menu doesn't resolve these issues: if you don't know that yank is copy, seeing it in the catalogue won't help much, especially if instead of the usual cut/yank/paste that could give you a hint, you have cut/paste is in some "destructive edits" menu, and yank is elsewhere And you can very well not have a command in the menu, after all, coding to have a command automatically dumped in a global list is easier that remembering to add it manually to some menu category And the input to search can be blank: you'll get the same catalogue with the same categories like in the menu (watch the video, the popup search has all the menu categories), so there is almost no difference, so there is nothing magical 1000% discoverability in this menu design
  • eviks 3y ago
    You're right, sorry got confused myself