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Redesigning the country selector

baymard.com

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Re: Redesigning the country selector

#81

Post by [deleted] »

ajankovic wrote: post #72
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

That seams as a minor mistake compared to not be able to type the name of the country in my native language. I guess that is not so obvious to the native English speaking users but it's the required feature if you are considering usability improvement as a goal of redesign.

[deleted]

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#82

Post by samgro »

mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

Can anyone explain why 'United States' could possibly be an autocomplete result for 'CA'? I am staring at United States and just can't see a 'C' anywhere... have I totally lost it?

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#83

Post by JoshTriplett »

troyjfarrell wrote: post #15

This can be diplomatically difficult. The linked implementation only lists Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". I could see this being interpreted in many different ways, with either side being insulted. (Maybe that's best.)

Most likely because they got the country information from the ISO standards (or from some other source rooted in those standards), which list the country name that way.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#84

Post by jqueryin »

samgro wrote: post #82
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

Can anyone explain why 'United States' could possibly be an autocomplete result for 'CA'? I am staring at United States and just can't see a 'C' anywhere... have I totally lost it?

Funny enough, I already proposed the same problem and solution with a blog post and sample code for "Re-thinking the State Dropdown with Autocompletion" back in May. Same issues applied, but there was at least some feedback on reddit and optional changes.

http://skookum.com/blog/re-thinking-the-state-dropdown-with-...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/h37gb/rethinking_the...

    My blog post links to jsbin sample source so feel free
    to optimize it with all of your proposed fixes.
http://jsbin.com/oxifa3/18/

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#85

Post by raldi »

samgro wrote: post #82
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

Can anyone explain why 'United States' could possibly be an autocomplete result for 'CA'? I am staring at United States and just can't see a 'C' anywhere... have I totally lost it?

United States of AmeriCA

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#86

Post by [deleted] »

steadicat wrote: post #20
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

I typed 'ita' and the first option was 'United Kingdom'.

[deleted]

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#87

Post by raldi »

steadicat wrote: post #20
mmastrac wrote: post #11

While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly. For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca". I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has…

I typed 'ita' and the first option was 'United Kingdom'.

The full name is the United Kingdom of Great BrITAin and Northern Ireland.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#88

Post by mynegation »

awj wrote: post #64
mynegation wrote: post #16

My main complaint about old country pickers and this one is non-prioritization of countries in the list. Yes, I understand that this may be a sensitive issue, but how much likely your customer is going to be from Canada than from Cameroon. Or if I start typing 'CA' in this selector, I get American Samoa and Antarctica before Canada! Let alone my old acquaintances Cambodia and Cameroon. Same for Russia - you get Aruba…

I think that's making it too hard. Where is this information coming from? How do you update it? Instead, just order the matches like so: 1. Everything that matches at the first word 2. Everything that matches at the start of some word 3. Everything that matches at a non-start position within a word Granted, in this scheme Cameroon will still show up before Canada, but you don't have to look anywhere near as hard to f…

This is a good suggestion - I believe prefix match should weigh more than partial infix match.

As for "too complicated" - I am not suggesting to extract GDP or population data in Javascript. But in static HTML on server side you may add additional "weight" attribute to each option, the way alternative spellings are added (look at the HTML source). And then you may manage these weights externally.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#89

Post by ctdonath »

billpg wrote: post #4

Impressed to see 'England' become 'United Kingdom'. Not so impressed to see that 'Wales' wasn't similarly treated.

Yes, glad to see at least a fragment of multiple naming is recognized. Started entering Deutschland and it settled on Germany. Entering Ivory Coast gave Côte d'Ivoire. The same should happen for all countries where the country's name for itself differs from a popular version.

Endless debate may follow this question: WHICH name should it use? If used in the USA, I'm expecting to settle on Germany and Ivory Coast for the above examples, but would be surprised if residents thereof didn't object. United States is obvious, but much of the world knows it as Les États-Unis (which was NOT recognized), and America is a very popular if unofficial/improper variant (which BTW drives some "hey, we're in America too!" Canadians batty). Methinks the final name used should be what citizens thereof call home, but understand it would confuse much of the general rabble.

Re: Redesigning the country selector

#90

Post by ctdonath »

kablamo wrote: post #32

As a vimperator user and command line person this is awesome. But obviously as a tablet or mobile phone user this would be not good. I think this could be easily fixed by having the drop down menu pop up when you click in the input field (before you have typed anything).

How about popping up a world map, letting the user tap the country, and if that's unclear give a list of local countries? Or putting a map button next to the field for such augmentation of typed entries?
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