search-suggestion / Best way to show up the look-up option

Question

I am designing a truck details edit form screen. Which consist of truck’s general information tab and a document tab to upload the document related to that truck. In the truck’s general information tab there is field called as driver name, the user have the option to search for the specific driver base on the some parameters and assign a driver to that truck. Now the question is, which will be a best approach to give a search option for specific field,

• Option 1: Show the search & result in popup but it is a responsive design popup is not recommended due to view port constrains.

• Option 2: Navigate the user to a new screen with search and result. But here problem is we have carry the forward the truck info to that new screen to maintain the context from where the user is navigated from and it should be inside the tab (general information tab)? also if the user have enter any data before reaching this particular fields in the parent screen, all the data has to be retained once user back to parent screen.

Refer the screen shown below.

Answer 1

Well can't you use a search form on the same page without using popups or navigating to other page?

You can use autocomplete, like selectize, and select2. In the example above I've used select2, but selectize seems a bit more usable.

Answer 2

I find when a form gets complicated enough that you can't seem to find a good way to fit it all in without making it confusing it often indicates that some sort of multi step wizard is likely a better solution.

The downside is that the user can't fill out everything on one screen, however filling in 2-3 separate smaller well focused forms can be done very quickly with little cognitive overhead.

How and where to split the fields depends on each use case but if you can put primary "decision" fields up front, it can also simplify or reduce secondary fields.

In your scenario, if the "searching for a driver" is it's own screen, it gives you room to show all of your search parameter fields AND present a result list with applicable meta data in a readable list allowing the user to make an informed selection.