Of course, I see this "Wizard" approach as being for less technical users. They would also go through the same process to select the country they didn't want the vehicle to be manufactured in. Once again, this could be a drop-down list, radio buttons, etc depending on what best suits the condition. So, after selecting the fuel exception above, the user clicks on the hyperlinked words "particular fuel" to choose the exception as below: Now, to deal with any "exceptions" to the search criteria, you would basically recreate the first window again, but with different wording, like: #Boolean search builder free#Of course your approach may differ depending on whether they should see a free text field, a drop-down list of options, etc. So, the example above shows what a user may see if they've selected the "Vehicle is produced by particular manufacturers" checkbox and then clicked on the hyperlinked text to select the manufacturer(s) they want included in the search results. Clicking on the hyperlinked words would present the user with something like the example below: If they select a checkbox for an option that requires further info then the relevant words are hyperlinked. They can select one or more checkboxes as necessary (or maybe not any?!). The above shows how Step 1 could work, giving users a number of options they can select by ticking the relevant checkbox. Below is a mockup of how this could work, using an example of a motor vehicle database: #Boolean search builder how to#However, in terms of actual suggestions on how to simplify this, another approach would be to just create some sort of "Wizard" process that steps the user through the process with a combination of natural language and a familiar 'web' look and feel. I also like the idea of a Venn diagram - would be interesting to see how that pans out. Otherwise developing a less complicated interface may be a lot of work for little gain. I agree that trying to find a way to simplify it for less technical users is a good idea, so long as you expect to have less technical users using the system. I get the impression (though you haven't actually said it) that you're working with an awful lot of data comprised of many many fields/variables. Often, though not always, Apple's approach is a good place to start - but perhaps in your case it may not be. There's quite a few good ideas/references here, especially to some existing approaches. It makes sense to have these as canned or semi-canned queries that can be selected and specified easily while putting something like Kaleidoquery under Advanced for the rarer ad hoc querying. You’ll probably find that 90% of your users' queries fit only a few patterns (e.g., “Customers with name beginning with Xxxx,” “Accounts I’m responsible for with outstanding bills,” “Orders made between date a and b”). Query builders are one of the few places where it makes sense to have separate Basic and Advanced modes. There have been a couple lines of work taking this approach: One solution that avoids both of these issues is to represent the logic graphically with a plumbing or electrical metaphor. Then there’s the issue of losing track of nested parentheses. Often users tend to interpret "or" to be an an exclusive OR. The main problem non-technical users have with Boolean logic is understanding the difference between AND and OR because it doesn’t always correspond to natural language (e.g., “show me orders from New York and New Jersey” almost certainly means Location = NY OR Location = NJ).
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