[Sigia-l] Less Spatiality, More Semantics?

[Byron Stevens]

On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 05:00  PM, Thomas Vander Wal wrote:

>  If we start
> thinking that the user is attracting information to themselves then we 
> can
> get better think what the user can do with that information from the 
> device
> they have drawn the information to.

Interesting to read this, as for many years I have used that approach 
with development teams to help them understand how to design and create 
information retrieval experiences that may better serve the 
small-screen & blinkered environment which today's computing 
environments force upon us. One usually adapts to this flat and narrow 
world, but so also does one's thinking. This was one reason we had to 
invent the "where Am I" principle - lots of titling & other indicators 
to tell us "where we are" or "where we have ended up" even though it's 
usually looks like the same window on the same screen - only the 
content changes with no accompanying sensation of location, or 
movement.  Today's computing environment, and especially the web is 
like scanning a nearby landscape through a telescope - can't really see 
the whole picture, just the details...

One long term target of mine has been the "Go" button on search pages, 
to which I always respond "Go where? I thought you were going to bring 
me what I asked for!" For me, search engines are more about collecting 
information in one place so I can quickly and easily evaluate which 
elements are relevant to my interest.

I think this way of thinking about the machine as an agent rather than 
a physical space may have at least another advantage of helping to 
re-frame and re-focus screen and page design to a more concise and 
relevant representation of information more in line with the nature of 
the information being sought. Sometimes the appropriate metaphor is 
"I'm going there", other times it's "bring it to me here"
I recall some of the excesses of the "spatial" model still with us 
where we see one "home" page nested within another, within another to 
finally "arrive at the desired information - which indeed feels like 
navigation - sometimes circumnavigation :-)

Byron


Byron Stevens
bstevens at neptune.on.ca