Multidimensional sort of lists in mobile devices

Many apps for mobile devices show lists of elements that the user can sort by choosing a single metric, e.g. price or date or alphabetical order. Often, none of the different sorting is ideal, in fact elements that are more interesting to the user are often spread along the list as there is no single sorting that can group them together at the top. We propose that the user can sort the list by including two or more metrics to create a personalized ranking. Sorting is thus multidimensional and the order of the chosen metrics defines a different ranking according to predefined weights. We designed and developed an iOS framework that implements a multidimensional sortable list, with a drag-and-drop interface to let the user choose the personal order of metrics. We performed qualitative user tests with 8 users.