[IxDA Discuss] Continuous Scroll

[Cindy Lu]

Hi!

I thought this thread of discussion was interesting so I would like to offer
some comments.

I am working on an application used by investment professionals. Some users
we visited did not like paging.  I observed users setting the page limit to
max whenever they started an application and complained why the default was
not the max.  When they log in, they want to quickly scan how their clients
are doing, so they scroll down all the clients' records and glance some
key data in columns and rows.

We recommended the continuous/infinit search similar to Microsoft's live
search to our product team. Our product Beta has launched.  We receive some
positive reactions.  However, we also observed some problems:
1) Performance. As you scroll down the page, there is a delay for the system
to load the data. Filtering and sorting can be slow too.
2) Showing the user the total records and where the user is (see Live
Search). The development team has difficulty in capturing the total records
and showing where the user is because the records are dynamically generated.
3) The jump of the scroll bar. As you move the scroll bar to the bottom, the
scroll will jump back after a short delay and more records are shown.

Currently, the team is in the process of improving the performance and
resolve the total record issue.  We are in the process of testing it with
users.

If you have designed such feature for enterprise applications and have
lessons learned for both designs and usabilty testing, I appreciate it if
you could share them.

Thanks!

- Cindy