Sort Criteria

Problem

Users needs to find information among big sets of data.

Figure 1. File ordering in Mac OS/X.

Principle

Easy of access

Forces

Provide enough feedback to inform about the current sorting criteria applied.

Solution

Define ordering criteria whenever you need to show collections of objects in the user interface. E.g. when using Population Interaction Units.

Rationale

Sets of data are easily explored if the information is sorted by an user well-known criteria.

Examples

Multiple implementations of grid controls allows to order the elements been displayed using the columns shown (Figure 1). Selecting a column header forces a reordering using such column (first time ascending, second one descending). It is specially interesting to see how the feedback about sorting is provided as an arrow-cap in the heading.

Specification

Define an ordered list of properties to check for each object and choose the direction of the ordering: ascending or descending for each attribute.

Example: Rank DESC, Surname ASC, Name ASC

The provided example sort a group of people by rank (descending), surname (ascending) & finally name (ascending).