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I'm working on a ticketing interface. In a word users will be able to open a request (a ticket), describe the problem they are experiencing and then they'll submit their request.

It's a very simple form except for one thing: each request has to be associated to a location. There is a location assigned by default but if the users wish to choose a different one they have to pick it within a huge directory of locations.

As a result I have to display a long list of locations with some filters in order to help the users find the place they're looking for more easily.

My problem is that the list can be very long (hundreds of locations).

As far as I can tell, here are my options:

  1. Display the first few (20 - 30) and have pagination at the bottom
  2. Have a simple "load more" button which loads the next 20 or 30 locations. => with that option I fear that the page is going to grow far too long.

What would you do? Do you see any other way to do this?

Btw I have chosen NOT to display this list of locations in a modal view because this would bring its own UX issues. So what I'm planning to do is to insert the list below the "location" area after a click on "change location".

This is the initial state of the form: enter image description here

This is what happens when clicking on "change location": Notice the filters on the left, the search/filtering box at the top and the potentially very very long list of locations enter image description here

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If the users know what they are looking for I would use a typeahead box. You can let both the technical name and the human readable name be searchable.

Example of a typeahead input field: https://twitter.github.io/typeahead.js/

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  • Thanks. I'm planning to have one of those but to me it's just one way to get to the information. In many cases the user will really need to see a list because they won't know what to search for. Besides the way locations are named in my client's database can be inconsistent so one might not know which keyword to use. Mar 10, 2015 at 15:28
  • In that case I guess a searchable select box is out of the question as well? What about a paginated list/table of locations when you click "change location"? Is it possible to add some filters? Mar 10, 2015 at 15:55
  • I've just added a screenshot of what I've done so far for the list of locations. It has filters on the left and a search/filter box. I guess I am going to have pagination in there. I don't see any other way. Mar 10, 2015 at 16:11
  • Yes, pagination seems like the least bad idea... perhaps you can do some guerrilla user testing to verify it. (An off-topic thing that's missing from your mockup is a clear way to select a location from the list.) Mar 11, 2015 at 11:06
  • Thanks Josef, a few people pointed out that this was missing. We've changed is so that a location is always selected to make it clear what it looks like when it's selected + to show the current location selected. Mar 16, 2015 at 13:22

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