Re: [Usability]Test or analysis needed: Automatic completion

[<bordoley msu edu>]

Jeff Waugh  said:

>> Do you have any specific problems with the Nautilus style?

> Only the lack of a drop down list - I think the 'finger feel' of the
> Nautilus address bar is excellent. If it had a list too, it would be
> perfect. :-)

Well microsoft has shown in real world testing that the Nautilus style 
autocompletion (preview in the entry) has usability issues for everyday users.

See this link that calum previously sent:

http://www.listserv.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A2=ind0011B&L=chi-web&P=R8687

Below are relevant comments from that link
-----------------------------------------------
1) Many users do not touchtype, and the "display in place" feature created
false positives: Users would type in a URL, we'd make an autosuggestion, but
the user's would hit return without looking at the screen - and we'd take
them to a URL they did not want. We also saw a minority of novices that were
confused with the whole idea - selected text appearing even though they
hadn't typed it was very strange to them.

<snip/>

The IE5 design focused on these two issues: reduce false positives, and
simultaneously improve the potential value of the feature by offering more
choices. I prototyped several different designs for presenting the results,
we did several rounds of usability studies, and that's where what you see
today came from. There are minor efficiency losses relative to IE4, but the
reduction in errors (false positives) and the improvement in relevance
(multiple suggestions) was a tradeoff that I felt was the right one.  It
also gave us a UI we could reuse for doing autosuggestions on edit fields
within web pages, another IE5 feature. Also, Tab does work as a way to jump
into the suggestions list, which doesn't require repositioning your hands.

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dave