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This might be a bit of a brainstorming question, and it could have already been answered, but I haven't found much of anything useful online; so bare with me.

In our enterprise search engine, there are a lot of panels with lists and pagination panels; and unfortunately not a lot of real estate for these.

In the requirements, the following pagination requirements were a must:

  • showing how many items are displayed per page
  • option to change how many to display per page
  • how many estimated results users would get with their search query
  • navigation between pages
  • ability to skip to a particular page
  • refresh button to refresh results/pagination

Now these seemed satisfied and product managers and clients were happy... but me. You can see the screenshot of the current pagination.

enter image description here

What I absolutely hate is fact that our pagination is so long/wide, that it ends up wrapping itself onto either a new line or splitting into two lines when it's displayed in smaller panels or smaller screens. No one has complained, but it frankly hurts my eyes.

I was wondering if making this pagination collapsed or minified for smaller screens would work for the users, my eyes and generally for the aesthetics of our search engine. Due to the extensive nature of our pagination panels, I couldn't really find any other examples online.

Has anyone encountered this issue? Am I over-engineering this problem in my head? Could you provide with useful sources/examples of this issue? Would hover-over icons for every | section | of pagination be an issue?

To clarify: this application is not mobile application as our customers would never have a use case for that. Our customers are very large firms with large databases and data.

Any pointers would be very appreciated.

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  • Could you clarify why there are "lots of lists" for a search result.
    – DarrylGodden
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:12
  • Certainly. We have result list itself with a lot of buttons to perform actions on that list, with pagination there. Then there is estimated results list display on the side. Then there is filters list which is literally in hundreds (you would amazed at the data amounts we have to process:) ) Then there is preview list for each of the search items that has to be displayed along side with the main results, etc. It is not a simple google search UI sadly. Hope this helps :)
    – aly.i.ux
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:17
  • I'm trying to understand the use case/benefit of showing so much data to a user and whether the results could be better filtered at search stage? Given how many results there are, it seems the search isn't performing at an optimum level.
    – DarrylGodden
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:24
  • Good point, @DarrylGodden :) Tell that to our PM's or users that are dealing with billions of documents, user entries, etc. Unfortunately, even with all the filters at the search level, there still will be hundreds of thousands of results. That moves us from the point that pagination panel itself would need to be collapsed or minified in some way. I do not think search efficiency and our requirements (which are satisfied, mind) are related here. Does that make more sense? I don't mean to confuse:)
    – aly.i.ux
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:28
  • Ok, well I won't labour the point much more, but I cannot see the user case for "billions of documents/user entries," what can somebody do with all this data? Considering pagination is your issue, suggests it's not working for the users as, aside from the initial search, it sounds like they're performing a second search looking through the resulting set of data.
    – DarrylGodden
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:58

2 Answers 2

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Is the app used in mobile ?

Why not simply making a responsive version of it ?

You could have the controls on a row. How many per page and pages and in text underneath like Displayed 102 / Estimated 245090 .

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  • It is not used for mobile, no. Our clients are very big law firms, banks and health care professionals. They have no use case for mobile platforms.
    – aly.i.ux
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:16
  • Also I would rather we have a one line pagination. That's my pet peeve: It is currently being wrapped onto another line when the pagination is displayed in smaller list panels. Thank you for suggestions though.
    – aly.i.ux
    Oct 15, 2018 at 13:23
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After a few deliberations with my fellow designer, I have come up with a popover design that would allow users to customise the panel items to be displayed via checkboxes.

This would help minification/collapsing of the panel.

We also decided that by default, panels would be only displaying current page number out max page number and respected arrows with ellipsis dropdown for more options to be selected.

See the screenshot below and feel free to comment on any issues you see with this.

enter image description here

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