I need to come up with a UI to filter a table. I saw this question but which makes me want to go to a single-box design. However, my team is leaning for a multi-field solution. We use a piece of software in house, and this is what their filtering looks like:
When you click on one item, it opens up a box:
Extra options can be expanded:
Some boxes come with just a free field:
I am a little against this design mainly because it's a truckload of work, and I have the feeling users won't want to use it. At the same time, some of the searches here seem to be... basically impossible to perform with the free format field (for example "all tasks without a project and for a specific client and without a description"...).
The option I proposed (still trying to be lazy) is a GitHub-style solution where the free-field text can be written like "author:mercmobily status:closed", but that won't be deemed as "user friendly".
What's the current "go" for multi-field search in terms of UI? Is the examples I provided over-complicated and considered to be avoided?
