A slider or a checkbox?

Question

I want to place a filter for price on my website. Currently, I have it placed as slider.

I've though about adding a input field on the left and right of the slider which will indicate the min and max values respectively. Which will make it look like this:

But won't that make the place cluttered?

There are also places where filter for price are placed as checkbox.

But what are the other ways to go about it? and which one would be the best?

Note that, the list gets filtered dynamically once the user changes the slider or checks the checkbox.

PS: Images are not from my designs. Designs are prettier, but, under construction! :)

Thanks in advance! :)

Answer 1

I think input text (from)+ slider + input text (to) is the better solution. In this case you can set your own range without checking a few checkboxes. But if you want minimize requests on the server each time the customer changes slider range, then you can add a button "ok". In this case the user would set range - press ok - and see the results.

See example

Answer 2

I would agree with JeromeR that "it depends" (all good UX questions are answered that way :-). More detail about your audience, the situation, other elements of the page, etc. may change the answers you get.

I think a slider might be a good solution (depending), though if the user does not need the precision of additional text boxes to specific detailed values, I would think that might clutter things up - unless your users DO need that level of specificity.

I also agree with Vlad that hitting the server with every single change of the slider could be pretty onerous for the user (especially if fine granularity is needed), so some sort of "submit changes to my filter" might be a good control to add... especially if there are MANY filters to set.

That, however, will also depend on the amount of data that is being loaded with each new request: if each server hit will only pull down a small amount of data and be pretty quick, you might get away with a request for every adjustment. If the results will be large for any given request, however, and users are likely to need to make many adjustments, you might want to let them tailor the details before explicitly submitting the request.

I personally do NOT like using checkboxes for range-type values like this (if only because they tend to take up more space and put more cognitive load on the user due to more decisions), but as always, you will best know the context for this control.

So there you go: it depends. But maybe this gives you a little more to think about. Good luck!