[Design] Saving Search Collections

[Mimi Yin]

On Feb 1, 2007, at 4:03 PM, D John Anderson wrote:

> If I understand your email correctly, I think the way save search  
> results works today is the same as your proposal here except for:
>
> - Search results don't automatically refresh
> - And I don't understand what you mean by "Be reflected on its  
> member items as a 'Label' (aka the 'Appears in' field)"

It actually appears to do the appears in behavior I described. But we  
would like the ability to name the collection before it's added to  
the sidebar.

>
> The saved search results collection is just what you would get if  
> you made a new collection and dragged all the items in the search  
> results to it.

I think that's a good point, the user can just create a new  
collection and drag the search results into that collection.  
Providing a 'Save Search' feature may set unrealistic expectations  
about how the saved search collection will behave. It seems like the  
biggest advantage of saving a search result set over creating a new  
collection and dragging the items into the new collection is that a  
saved search would automatically refresh.

It's more onerous, but it's also more clear. I'm also wondering how  
frequently users will want to do this. An onerous, but clear workflow  
may be better than an easier, but potentially misleading one.

We could add a 'Save as a Collection* option in the menu, but at this  
point, I'm leery of adding another menu item that may or may not make  
sense to users, especially because we're not really sure what  
*additional* value it provides users in the Preview time frame.

Are there more specific target user use cases you have in mind?

Mimi