GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 672969
Show the search field by default
Last modified: 2012-09-05 09:42:54 UTC
Hi, you should not rely on users thinking "oh yeah, this app surely has a search function but the developers chose not to show it to me, I just need to start typing". This is not discoverable and hurts usability. I know for sure that Joe Plumber or grandma is never going to think of this, and they are exactly the kind of people we should be designing for, not geeks who can "guess" how an app works. Please show the search bar at all times, by default. You're not going to miss those 10 pixels of vertical height in the contact list, I promise :)
+1 - We had the same problem at the documentation hackfest.
The reason we hid the search field is to be consistent with the other application designs. The aim is to have search fields consistently hidden at the top of lists and grid views, so people learn where to find them (we're not there yet, obviously). Search is particularly important to contacts though, so I'm open to showing search by default, at least for now.
A "trick" could be to show it at application start and hide it after a decent delay, it does learn the user that a search exist, though it does not solve the issue of teaching the user that typing in the middle of no where make it reappear. Any ideas ?
Personally, I really don't see why we should care about gaining 10 pixels of vertical space, versus all the advantages conferred (in terms of usability and accessibility) by an always-on, easily-discoverable widget. It's not like that list view is really constrained for space...
We discussed this issue at the recent UX hackfest, and agreed that the search bar should remain visible. It'd be great if someone wanted to fix this for 3.6. ;)