Today, on top of an inventory list, you have a few filters: Authors, Genre, Subject. Then a search bar, then a display mode option.
As much as Authors is a field that is almost always filled and filled correctly, the same cannot be said for Genre and even less for Subject. On most of the books I have, only a few have some Subjects for instance. It makes the list of Subjects in the filter very irrelevant for my inventory, as they only apply to those few books. In Genre, there are also different genres I would personally merge together, as well as missing genres that would apply to many of my books. Of course in an ideal scenario, I could take a day or two and fill all these in, and things might look different in other people inventories. The point is, the content in these filters isn’t necessarily perfect and therefore the filters are not always relevant.
However, the filters are very prominent. It’s the first thing you see above your list of books. So prominent that it even moves the live search bar (always useful), to the right, making it less discoverable and reachable.
This is a suggestion for making the filters a secondary element, that can be opened when you need it, by those who need it, but that won’t have as much importance as a default.
Here’s a draft mock-up of how it could look when opening the page:
Search, as hypothesised a more useful for all feature, is now larger and arrives first. The new bar also have a Order option (unrelated to this issue but what I believe could be useful), and what interests us here, a Filter switch. Now, the exact UI element for the filter switch is likely not the right one, here I only used what was available already.
When you press the filter switch, the new filter bar unfolds (here again, just a draft concept):
That would be where you can find Authors, Genre, Subject. I also added Language, a filter that I would find very useful, to show that the bar now has space to add more or less filters as needed.
I believe this would give the filters the right place: out of the way when not needed or not relevant, but easy to access when wanted.
Today, on top of an inventory list, you have a few filters: Authors, Genre, Subject. Then a search bar, then a display mode option.
As much as Authors is a field that is almost always filled and filled correctly, the same cannot be said for Genre and even less for Subject. On most of the books I have, only a few have some Subjects for instance. It makes the list of Subjects in the filter very irrelevant for my inventory, as they only apply to those few books. In Genre, there are also different genres I would personally merge together, as well as missing genres that would apply to many of my books. Of course in an ideal scenario, I could take a day or two and fill all these in, and things might look different in other people inventories. The point is, the content in these filters isn’t necessarily perfect and therefore the filters are not always relevant.
However, the filters are very prominent. It’s the first thing you see above your list of books. So prominent that it even moves the live search bar (always useful), to the right, making it less discoverable and reachable.
This is a suggestion for making the filters a secondary element, that can be opened when you need it, by those who need it, but that won’t have as much importance as a default.
Here’s a draft mock-up of how it could look when opening the page:
Search, as hypothesised a more useful for all feature, is now larger and arrives first. The new bar also have a Order option (unrelated to this issue but what I believe could be useful), and what interests us here, a Filter switch. Now, the exact UI element for the filter switch is likely not the right one, here I only used what was available already.
When you press the filter switch, the new filter bar unfolds (here again, just a draft concept):
That would be where you can find Authors, Genre, Subject. I also added Language, a filter that I would find very useful, to show that the bar now has space to add more or less filters as needed.
I believe this would give the filters the right place: out of the way when not needed or not relevant, but easy to access when wanted.