How best to present an option to type in text OR choose from a preexisting long list

Question

I have a use case on mobile in which a user can type in a label for a group of items. Certain labels will be very common. The list of common labels is quite long. Finally, not all users will initially understand the breadth of labels they might use (ie they won't yet have built a mental model for available use cases), so we need the initial presentation to help develop that mental model.

Is there a best practice for this type of use case? I'm leaning towards a text/search field with autosuggest for the common labels, as well as common suggestions when first landing on the screen. Some additional questions:

1. How should the interaction model should work as they type (should the top autosuggest just be what's typed or should there be a done button that just submits what's currently typed, or both)
2. Is it weird to have autosuggest, but show random (choosable) suggestions before even typing?

Would love to see an example of this someplace.

Answer 1

I like this approach: Common suggestions when first landing on the screen. I think your approach combining suggestions without even do the type will give users that you have some suggestions. Combining with list that can be search is a great idea.

To answer your questions:

1. How should the interaction model should work as they type (should the top autosuggest just be what's typed or should there be a done button that just submits what's currently typed, or both)

Quite confused with the options here. I think this is a very common pattern that you can copy the interaction. The most common is user type, then show suggestions, then user click on suggestions to apply. If there's no suggestions, then user can add the label they typed. If the label will be used repetitively, then can consider to save the new label that user typed.

2. Is it weird to have autosuggest, but show random (choosable) suggestions before even typing?

The goal for auto-suggest is to simplify the UX and interaction cost. Definitely a great idea on how to make it more contextual.

Answer 2

I like the text search with autocompleted suggestions too.

As for discovering / populating the initial options, three thoughts:

1. Randomness is rarely perceived as randomness. Users assume there's an order to and a cause for the things they see. Even if it changes every time I visit, I might assume these are the newest entries like on a news or webcomic site. So rather than create the false impression that something they did caused the suggestions they see, go with a clearly identifiable pattern like alphabetic. Even just seeing a few "aardvark, access, advertising" entries is enough to tell the user that there's much more and that if they scroll down at fairly predictable distances they will discover things.

2. Make sure they can still search for non-suggested things and that the search results page suggests similar searches when theirs turns up too little. This helps in trial and error to find out what sorts of things are on your site.

3. Include a "See all categories" button or whatever it may be where they can see and easily CTRL-F through a listing of the things you would suggest.