Story

Whether you’re a student in college, a design professional, or an author of a book, you have all experienced the clutter of notes, reminders, memos, drawings, and documents scattered across the surface of your desk. There comes a point in this chaotic, unorganized display, when your tidy instinct begs for some order.

If your lucky, you quickly find materials you can use: a binder, file folders with the colored tabs, paper clips, even a stapler. You initially grab the content, sort and filter as a means for organizing and making order. As you organize, you may classify the data by such lateral relationships as (see Chapter 3, Display of Information):

• Nominal - uses labels and names to categorize data.

• Ordinal - using numbers to order things in sequence.

• Alphabetical - using the order of the alphabet to organize nominal data.

• Geographical - using location, such as city, state, country, to organize data.

• Topical - organizing data by topic or subject.

• Task - organizing data based on processes, tasks, functions and goals.

Having now integrated your skills with your office supplies, you can now marvel at the organized binder- full of colored label tabs, folders, and sequential pages. Your diligence pays off with evidence of an immaculate desk.

Our Minds Hate Disorder

Simply put, our minds want store and extract information though order and organization.

Lateral Access and the Mobile Space

Content that is organized laterally is at the same level tier in the information architecture. Unlike, information that is organized in a drill down format from general to specific, the information on a lateral level may or may not have a direct correlation with each other.

Lateral information on mobile displays is organized by user goals rather than by specific user tasks. Home and Idle Screens, Desktops, and Home Pages, etc., all organize content laterally. Consider a travel website. The homepage organizes content by various user goals such as: Booking a Flight, Checking the Flight Status, Finding Vacation Deals. Separately, these goals are not dependent upon each other, but together they form the overall purpose of the travel site: to provide travel services to the individual.

Within the mobile space, this lateral information must be clearly defined, organized and presented, and capable of interaction.

Mapping - Use our knowledge of cultural metaphors to understand the relationship of object and its function.

• A "tab" is understood in principle to the file folder tab. We expect this tab to be selectable and an identifier of a folder that contains related content. If we see one tab, we will expect to see adjacent tabs that are separating additional content. Too many grouped tabs; however, will cause our users to become cognitively overloaded during the decision making process. Thus, resulting in slower performance and user frustration.
• A "virtual cube" that shows content on one or two faces, will be expected to have content on all others that share the same axis. Users will expect faces to rotate. Constrain the rotation to one axis, otherwise users will become frustrated with the inability to quickly navigate and correctly select the content. Animation of the rotation from one face to the other must be provided. Otherwise, the user may not know their current selection’s position on the cube.
• The corner of a page slightly peeled back is understood in principle to pages in a book. We expect access to the pages underneath the top layer. A gestural interaction that allows for turning the page will be expected. Animate the transition from one page to the next.
• Use proximity. Make sure the display and control you are using have a proxemic relationship. An indicator whose function is to expand or reveal more information must be close enough to the information it will affect.

Patterns for Lateral Access

Using appropriate and consistent lateral access widgets will provide an alternative way to present and manipulate content serially. Within this chapter, the following patterns will be discussed, based on how the human mind organizes and navigates information:

• Tabs– Based on the concept of file folder tabs, these elements are used to separate and clearly communicate, sets of pages or features at the same level in the information architecture.

• Peel Away – An organic and animated representation of a page being flipped over to reveal a second page behind it.

• Simulated 3D Effects – Displays and alternate view to the content on the page using 3D graphics. When device gestures or viewer movements are used, these items affected will follow the presumed physics or correctly represent the space they occupy.

• Pagination –Serially displays a location within a set of pages. Offers the ability and function to navigate between pages easily and quickly.

• Location Within –An indicator is required to show the current page location within series of several screens of similar or continuous information. This is presented with an organic access method.