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- Choose a presentation strategy appropriate for the volume and type of
information.
- Design layout to convey information through spatial
relationships.
- Always position a control in the same place.
Bits of this page have been pilfered from Bruce Tognazzini's website.
The spatial presentation section is taken from Jef Raskin's column;
it contains excerpts from notes for a talk called
"Space Craft: Perceptual Aids for Cognitive Activity",
by Kevin Mullet, (former?) product designer for Macromedia.
| Scaling as the number of objects increases |
Presenting objects (that's user interface objects, such as files, folders, applications)
as icons works when there are few icons (less than 100), and the icons look different.
If the icons look the same (like Folders) and the differentiaion is purely textual,
then there's little point in using icons.
Between 100 and 50000 items we use lists, with a fast, convenient search mechanism.
The search mechanism becomes more useful (and important) the more items in the list.
At 2000-2500 items users don't bother browsing the list; they use the search.
Above 50000 items we start using search-only mechanisms.
As an aside: MS Windows (and KDE) has a facility called tooltips where a small
description is displayed by an icon if your cursor lingers over it.
The point is that if the icons are so hopeless that they need this feature,
why don't we just display the text in the first place?
| Layout and Spatial Presentation |
Spatial information is available at the earliest stages of information
processing.
Spatial relationships should be used to reveal internal relationships more
explicitly.
Carefully designed layout will help users orient themselves,
locate information, and navigate efficiently.
The same button should always appear in the same absolute screen location
(failing this, in the same position relative to the window location).
Organise screens so that you don't have to jump around to follow the workflow.
Consecutive tasks should have adjacent widgets to accomplish them.
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