Query Branch: UI Proposal

["Ben Monnahan" <monnahan gmail com>]

Hi all, we were discussing the UI for the query code at the meeting and I said I would formulate my idea in an email.

My proposal is for a UI that covers 2 use cases.  (1) Casual use, by a user regardless of their technically proficiency, and (2) Serious use by a technical user. My guess (not backed up by data :)) is that the large majority of the use falls into (1), but that providing (2) would be a big benifit to those who need it.


USE CASE (1):  We would have a simple toggle between AND and OR for the tags.  Checkboxes stay the same as now and the query happens depending on how the toggle is set .  For the toggle, my current idea would be a dropdown just above the list of tags containing  "Require all tags" and "Require any of the tags" but it could be done many ways. (Another check box, put it in the menus)

This allows for queries such as:
(A)  (Dog OR Cat)
(B)  (Vacation AND Frank AND Injury AND Water)

But doesn't allow for:
(C)  ((Dog OR Cat) AND Favorite)
(D)  ((Paris OR (France AND Monument)) AND  (2003 OR 2004))

As a side suggestion I would like to add a "tray" (suggested by someone else elsewhere) which would allow you to construct a working set of photos.  Having that would make (C) possible although you would have to reformulate it as ((Dog AND Favorite) OR (Cat AND Favorite))  Query (D) is still difficult athough not impossible.

The benifits of this approach is that it should be fairly discoverable, and apparent to all levels of users how it works.  With the added power of the tray fairly complex queries could be generated in step by step manner.


USE CASE (2):  I would have a separate dialog available from a menu that allows a much more powerful interface similar to an advanced search you would find on the web.  I can't say I have a very good idea of how exactly this would work, but the idea would be to provide the user with a lot of controls to make queries like (D) possible and maybe even (C) if the user is more comfortable with doing it that way.


Summary:  Its a two pronged approach on simple way of just letting the user choose between ORing and ANDing, and a dialog for those who need advanced searching.  My guess is that for the majority of users the simple approach will be enough, so I think its worth the effort to optimize for the common case and give them the best possible experience while not removing the possibility of more intricate queries that the dialog would provide.  An additional benefit of the dual approach is that the simple query could probably go in without too much effort while the more complex system was being developed.


Comments/Questions/Other proposal?

Ben