“Inclusive/Additive” vs. “Exclusive/Reductive” filtering - How to differentiate?

Question

I'm working on an HR application where admins can define the scope of a user's role based on their location and organization. So as in the example below, a role may be limited to the "Los Angeles" Location and also to the "Information Technology" and "Sales & Marketing" organizations.

User testing has revealed that the expectation of this configuration is that only users in the intersection would be visible, so only those employees located in Los Angeles who are also either in IT or Sales & Marketing. (Exclusive/reductive)

The required behavior though, is that all employees in the selected locations are available (regardless of organization) and all employees in the selected organizations are available (regardless of the location). (Inclusive/expansive)

It's a fairly unusual use case I'm struggling to find a solution that tests well and makes this clear. I'm curious if anyone has an example of a filtering/scoping mechanism that works similarly that might provide a better design pattern. Thanks!

Answer 1

What you are doing is adding the role item to the various different location or organization groups, however the UI design looks like the role is a group that you are adding location or organization items to. I believe this is why users are confused.

Can you make it clear that the selected role is being added to the location / organization groups, rather than the other way around?

Below is a crude way to do it, though it would be clearer what is happening if the user is able to edit a location / organization (with "All" as a special group) and add roles to each one (I'm not sure this is feasible in your scenario).

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

Answer 2

This is a problem of invisible logic, and as such I'd recommend being explicit.

Perhaps this will do:

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}