The Case for the Radically Simple Interface and Intelligent Information System
Metadata
3.1 Metadata (data about data) is created to establish classes of things and functions which lead through 'descending hierarchies' to single functions and things. Of course this is an absurd form of structure in a hypertext environment created specifically to overcome the limitations of tree and Dewey structures but this is where we are now.
3.2 The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information by George A. Miller originally published in The Psychological Review, 1956, vol. 63, pp. 81-97 [1] established that the optimal number of choices in selecting from more than nine classes or elements is:
7 + or - 2
If there are fewer than five classes they are too big whereas if there are more than nine classes or elements there are too many. There is hardly a PC application or web page that recognises this rule.
3.3 Building on Miller's work, Roy Stringer and I, in THE POWER OF NINE [2], showed how classifying phenomena into a maximum of nine choices would allow searching to be conducted through numeric key pads rather than qwerty keyboards. At that time we did not have the SMS experience which makes searching long lists at 'lower levels' much more effective.
3.4 A complicating factor for most PC applications and web sites is fundamentally flawed taxonomy; there is no sense in which, for example:
- Latest news
- Contact us
- Home Page; and
- Register here
share a single class attribute but you frequently see such groupings boxed as if they were a class. It is therefore even more important if an array is presenting unclassified options such as those above that their number is kept to an absolute minimum.
3.5 Separate but connected is the problem of applications choices. Occlusion is not a natural gift, it depends upon a highly focused search strategy and task performance. Although contemporary systems allow for multi tasking, often people want the option of concentrating entirely on a single task. There are many occasions when people will want a radically simple interface, for example, an email system that only offers in the first instance:
- Receive
- Read
- Write
- Send
with the system focusing entirely on one of these four once it has been chosen.
[1] http://www.well.com/user/smalin/miller.html
[2] Stringer, R. & Carey, K.: The Power of Nine: A Preliminary Investigation into Navigation Strategies for the New Library with Special Reference to Disabled People. Report to the Library & Information Commission, March 2000.