I am also a supporter of the guideline of graying out any fields or
controls that are not available in the current context, but can be
made available to the user by shifting the context. Among other
reasons stated above, another advantage is that tooltips can be
displayed on the inactive fields or
A couple of references to progressive disclosure have already been
made in this thread, and I wanted to point you to some of the applied
examples I've come across specifically regarding progressive
disclosure and progressive reveal:
The Xerox Star: A retrospective
On 10.2.2010, at 9.01, Gabor Vida wrote:
I'm opposed to the idea. I don't like forcing my users to hunt and
peck around an application to learn what it does. The they only
have to find it once belief feels like a crutch. An elegantly
designed interface can be both immediately usable and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation
Here's more on wikipedia that i think is the official term for
hidden navigation.
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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=49270
I'm not sure about studies on the subject but a good deal of this
depends on your users and what they expect from a ui as well as the
nature of the application. What is the app and what are your users
and business goals? Is this a walk up and use app or is it something
users will use day in and
It's not quite research, but John Maeda has a great book The Laws
of Simplicity where he discusses this in the first law, Reduce.
He has an acronym for accomplishing this, SHE: Shrink, Hide, Embody.
So hiding functionality has a certain value in his opinion, but only
if it's done thoughtfully
Thanks for the link, Francis. I can finally reference Jakob Nielsen in
a positive way ;)
Graham, we are talking about an extras on demand approach - sort of.
The difference is that the button or link that would be used to open
the extras would be completely hidden and only revealed on rollover.
A project that I am involved in has raised an interesting debate about
reducing clutter in an interface.
Specifically, one side believes that it is ok to completely hide some
interface elements and only reveal them on rollover. I don't mean
disable or dim them in a normal state and then make
I don't know of a study as such, but something solid to back up your
argument could be #6 in Jakob Nielsen's Ten Usability
Heuristics, namely Recognition, no Recall.
[ http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html ]
I mean, if something is actually hidden, the user *might* stumble
Sorry... that should have read Recognition, not Recall... with a
t! :)
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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=49270
Welcome to the
Hi Gabor,
It sounds like you're talking about an extras on demand approach.
http://designinginterfaces.com/Extras_On_Demand
Where you have too much to fit on one page, but they still have to be
easily accessible.
Depending on what you're hiding there are various design patterns
you could use,
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