Pagination Interface Question
9 January 08
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Based on your opinion of the users intent when using a pagination interface, which do you prefer, option 1 or option 2?
Based on your opinion of the users intent when using a pagination interface, which do you prefer, option 1 or option 2?
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Option one for sure. The ability to jump to the first or last page is a nice bonus.
I agree with option one. As the user, I’d prefer to have the option to directly get to the end rather than click and wait multiple times. Less hassle = less time spent.
I like option two’s text display (60-70 of 100 results) with option 1’s ability to go to the first/last page.
Option 1 allows me to quickly see how many pages my search returned and allows me to easily jump to the first or last page. So it gets my vote.
But I do agree with bofe and prefer Option 2’s text display since it doesn’t require me to do math to determine what results I’m currently viewing.
I think option 1 for the page numbers, but like bofe, I think the meta information on option 2 is much better.
Honestly, I think the best thing would be some JS to help show the rest of the pages such that it doesn’t take a click and page refresh (or 10) to get to the desired page number. But that’s perhaps a different question and largely dependent upon number of results, etc.
I agree with bofe. Option 1 with the test display of 2.
I like option 2s text display with option 1s ability to go to the first/last page.
Agree with bofe:
Prefer option 1 for navigation, and
option 2 for text display.
Those of you who like option 2. Can you tell me why you like the text display. Ask yourself, have you ever needed this information. Do you really need to know that your are viewing results x thru x.
Or, do you get what you need to know faster by know that I have x many results, and there are x many results on a page, and there are x pages. Combine that with the most obvious part of this interface, the page indicator, and you can eliminate unnecessary thinking. You don’t need the exact details, you get just enough to make a fast decision. This is the idea of thinslicing.
In my opinion users need 3 questions answered by this interface as quick as possible.
- How many results did I get? (100) – How many results does each page contain? (10) – How many pages are these results on? (10)
Ask yourself, which interface, text and links do this quicker?
Also, check out the pagination on endless.com. I think this interface is likely the best I have ever seen. The only improvement I would make to it is to show the total results.
Personally, seeing 60-70 of 100 results reinforces where I’m at in the list of results and feels comfortable. But on the flip side, I don’t think either of the text displays are really needed.
@Scott – Good call, I can dig that, but if I had to pick which info was valuable I’d say its the info that quickly tells me how many items are on a single page. This becomes more important when you allow the user to change the interface using the info.
Like bofe and others, I prefer #1’s navigation and #2’s text. As far as why I like #2’s text, if I ever had to search for the same thing again, I’ll know approximately where in the search results it is. When remembering the position of an item, I’ve rarely looked at which page it’s on, but rather it’s ranking in a list of other possible results. Maybe I’m just weird like that :) And, as you said, it helps me to know how many items are on a page, and if the option of changing the number of displayed results is used, page numbers suddenly have little relevance to search result positions.
I prefer the second option with a ‘view all’ link between the ‘previous’ and ‘next’ links instead of the nearby page jumps. After clicking ‘next’ a few times, I usually want to see everything at once rather than jumping around to different pages and possibly skipping the results I’m looking for.
I prefer the second option. You could possibly add a first and last as well like: << first < prev 4567 next> last>> but that might dampen the usability experience. I find knowledge of the context helpful too – if it is typical navigation for a search engine, people are unlikely to go further than the first seven pages without tweaking their search, however it if is a paginated list of identical records (like an address book) people are more likely to want to go the the last record. It’s all about context. You could always put first and last links to the right hand side of the smaller text displaying the number of records – kind of like a secondary navigation.