By contrast, surfacing interfaces display part or all of the site’s taxonomy at the first level, thus bringing the site organization to the surface. By adding these kinds of filters, designers enable users to quickly narrow down their search.
Surfacing interfaces often include a label, pull-down menu (or radio buttons), search entry field, a more specialized search, and submit button. Most often seen in e-commerce sites, surfacing interfaces are useful when a search request can be found across multiple categories. The pull-down menu should most often be placed before the entry field, so it is clear that these functions work together. This placement is critical if users cannot search by all products.
Buy.com places the pull-down menu after the search field. Although this organization is not necessarily confusing, it is a bit repetitive and perhaps even redundant. Users would not have to process as much information if some of the elements in this feature were collapsed. |
