The options are:

A) to keep the search field minimalist and expect users to browse through a fairly high number of results.

B) to add "advanced search" features that are going to make the query construction fairly complex, but that will limit the quantity of results.

Here are the hypothesis that we have for the moment (this is an ongoing research, we still haven't talked with real users):

1. The application is likely to show the most pertinent results first, so the fact that a search query returns a huge amount of results doesn't seem to be a problem because the user is likely to find what he is looking for within the first results.

2. In theory, police investigators tend to perform informational searches, where they begin with some known information (first name, family name and date of birth) and expect to find what they are looking for within one or several results (call cards, events, infractions, detentions, etc)

The question for now is: doesn't it seem easier just to write the query in a search field (google style) than to expect the user to build a detailed query using a fairly complex syntax to limit the number of results?

If the most relevant results are going to show up first anyway, isn't the effort to browse the results significantly less than the one to build the complex query?

Does anyone know any reading material, research data or anything to help me confront that theory and better answer my question?

The options are:

A) to keep the search field minimalist and expect users to browse through a fairly high number of results.

B) to add "advanced search" features that are going to make the query construction fairly complex, but that will limit the quantity of results.

Here are the hypothesis that we have for the moment (this is an ongoing research, we still haven't talked with real users):

1. The application is likely to show the most pertinent results first, so the fact that a search query returns a huge amount of results doesn't seem to be a problem because the user is likely to find what he is looking for within the first results.

2. In theory, police investigators tend to perform informational searches, where they begin with some known information (first name, family name and date of birth) and expect to find what they are looking for within one or several results (call cards, events, infractions, detentions, etc)

Question

From a UX research point of view, doesn't it seem easier just to write the query in a search field (Google style) than to expect the user to build a detailed query using a fairly complex syntax to limit the number of results?

If the most relevant results are going to show up first anyway, isn't the effort to browse the results significantly less than the one to build the complex query?

Does anyone know any reading material, research data or anything to help me confront that theory and better answer my question?