Keep Your Options Open

Better search and filter experience
Dropdowns, we hardly knew ya.
Dropdowns had their place. But now there's a better way.
Keep Your Options Open approach:
  • Show all categories of information and open sub items by default
  • As user makes filter selections, refresh result set immediately
  • Show which filters are applied
  • Make it easy to remove filters

Dropdowns hide what's possible

By hiding the options you can select, dropdowns make it harder to understand the information context. For example, seeing only the labels Event Type or Discipline in this screen, you have no idea what kind of options you might find here. Until you click. Even after you make a number of selections, you still have to click "FILTER" to see the impact.

Dropdowns make you do more work

The view at right (which in reality would require three separate clicks) shows how much valuable info is contained in (and hidden by) dropdowns. Now we know what Event Type and Discipline mean. But it takes a bunch of clicking to get that info.

Open options show all information

By contrast, consider this redesign. By leading with all options open, user can see the total scope of context without having to click.

Immediate results

Our reimagined interface is also easier to use. As you explore and click on options, the result set updates. No need for a separate Filter/Submit click. Multi selects, so often a challenge for dropdowns, are effortless here.