Looking for best practices on ordering dropdown options when using a logical sort vs an alphabetical sort. To keep this from being open ended, here are some specific cases:
- Chronological - i.e. Awaiting Review, Awaiting Approval, Approved
- Restrictive - i.e. No Access, Partial Access, Total Access or Enabled, Disabled
#1 seems relatively obvious, 1st step to last step feels natural, but #2 seems to be a bit more difficult of a case, do you order from most restrictive to least restrictive or the opposite.
What best practices do you follow when listing items in a logical order rather than alphabetical?
Some considerations:
- How does the default value play into your ordering?
- What if different features default a different way? (e.g., dropdown has enable, disable for status)
- Do you need to apply it as a rule, or case by case basis?
- How important do you think it is to the user that the logical order you use is the same between dropdown's of different values? (i.e., enable, disable & off, on)
Here is an example to use if you need one:
- None means that the feature will not be used on any platform (Most restrictive)
- Exclude allows you to create a blacklist of non supported platforms (Semi-restrictive)
- Include allows you to define a white list of supported platforms (Semi-Restrictive)
- All means that is used on all platforms. (Least Restrictive)