Inconsistent Filter panel location

[jcgood25]

I was just watching an internal 1DX call recording and the demo of the SCN beta Answers site by

It jogged my memory to an earlier observation that we presently have inconsistency as to which side the filter options panel appears.  Sometimes it is on the right, and other times it is on the left.  Based upon the current patterns, it would appear that the standard layout shows the list/results on the main portion of the screen and the filter panel options appears on the right.

For example (NOT exhaustive of course):

• Blogs:  Archives list is on the right (same when filtered by Tag)
• Answers: Filter is on right

• Tag Search:  Filter is on the left (perhaps this is the anomaly)  example:  http://go.sap.com/community/tag.html?id=01200615320800001756

[tamira · Accepted solution]

Yeah, so first we started with the blogging and questions platforms and when the tag pages were getting into implementation, the UX team had a recommendation that the sidebar should go to the left side when it comes to filtering to shift focus from a usability standpoint. The recommendation is that the sidebar should be changed to the left also for the blog and question roll pages (roll page=list view of blog posts/questions), but technically it's trickier to change the full layout of an already built product than one that is done from scratch. That's why there is currently an inconsistency from a sidebar perspective, and the focus is on features/functionality/navigation/header.

Would be nice to hear your thoughts about which "side" you think is better

Sidebars long term won't necessarily only have filtering options, but could also be a home for different widgets to get more personalized.

Thanks,

Gabi

[jcgood25 · Accepted solution]

As long as there is consistency, I am less concerned in the left vs. right, but I'll offer the following real world use cases for the filtering being more naturally found on the LEFT:

1. SAP Fiori / Master detail design - list of the left, details on the right.
2. http://www.ebay.com - do any search (I used 'SAP' as my search and the combination of weapons and books was amusing).  Filter criteria on the left, results on the right.  In fact, the ebay model should be emulated by all searches, where the filter criteria is almost suggestive based upon the catalog results.  We have tags don't we - let's use them.
3. http://www.bestbuy.com - another shopping type sample, but again the filter and category is on the right, and the results are on the left.
4. I am honestly not sure how well we support the current country/languages that use RTL, but according to a quick guess it would appear that approximately 80% of the world languages are LTR, so it is more natural for the majority.
5. I am typing this reply in the current SCN Communications view, and my unread item list is on the left, and the detail is on the right (similar to point #1)
6. I am left handed...

Now, all that being said, I really don't personally care, I just expect a 'community' to be consistent and have a uniform UX and UI so that it doesn't appear like we have an attention to detail disorder with our design. When going from a single platform like Jive that we all know had some challenges, our intended multi-platform future solution should look like a single platform even though behind the scenes it is not.

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeremy and Gaby,

I care a bit more about left versus right since Left (and Up) remains visible despite any issues with differently sized displays.  It is rather disappointing to me to still see those CREATE, UPDATE, SUBMIT, CANCEL, etc. buttons in the Right and Down position.  It would be nice if someone could explain how this practice continues and what is the justification there is for doing so.  I rather suspect that it will come back to "Well, that's the way we always do it." or even worse, "Our layout design standards force us to do it that way."

Sadly this poor practice continues even as we try to improve our UX for our customers using Fiori and some of our other improved tools.

Why??  I have no idea, but after decades of hearing complaints you would thinks something so basic in good page design would be implemented globally rather than left to what is probably some green screen design practice legacy from 40+ years ago.

Sorry about the soapbox spewing, but it is one of my pet peeves.

Cheers, Mike

SAP Technology RIG

[moshenaveh · Accepted solution]

Hello Michael & Jeremy,

This feedback comes in great timing as there is some work going on behind the scenes on how to improve this and make it more consistent.

I have listed both your feedback in our list.

Regards,

Moshe

[jcgood25 · Accepted solution]

Hi Moshe,

I see some additional inconsistencies on the main sap.com website too.  The developers list of tutorials (http://go.sap.com/developer/tutorials.html) filters on the left, but the main search from the header filters on the right (http://go.sap.com/search/search-results.html?Query=tutorial&%3Acq_csrf_token=undefined), so perhaps this behind the scenes work should look at the overall 1DX for sap.com, not just the SCN beta sites.

[jcgood25]

Adding tag