What a Mess!

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 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):

Having now integrated your organizational skills with those office supplies, you can marvel at the clean desk. On its surface lay a faceted arrangement of folders. Each folder, containing related content, is clearly labeled with colored tabs housing to allow for quick and easy access.

As discussed in Chapter 3, Display of Information, we understand the importance of organizing an information structure across a single page, or an entire OS. To recap, we know that are two main types of organizing with information architecture.

Lateral Access and the Mobile Space

Content across device’s OS must be organized and designed to follow a consistent information architecture to ensure a positive user experience. However, when considering mobile devices, the potentially smaller displays play a significant role in determining how this information architecture is designed for interaction. Smaller screen sizes affect the amount and type of content presented, and the user’s ability to successfully search, select, and read this information. To account for this, consider presenting the information laterally (at the same level tier in the information architecture) with appropriate widgets of access.

Reasons to Use Lateral Access Widgets Across the Mobile Space:

Benefits of lateral Access

Follow the Principles of Wayfinding and Norman’s Interface Model

As you know are now aware, the size of mobile displays can greatly influence how your content should be organized and designed. To make sure your user’s can navigate across this content, consider applying researched-based frameworks tied to wayfinding and Donald Norman’s Interaction model.

Wayfinding

In the introduction to the Widget part, the principles of wayfinding are discussed in detail. Certain wayfinding principles can be applied to lateral access widgets to ensure your user can navigate across content with ease.

Norman’s Interface Model

As Donald Norman would say, “Make things visible!” Lateral access elements must follow the principles of legibility, readability, and conspicuity discussed throughout this book.

Consider the following principles:

Feedback

Feedback is a noticeable, and immediate response to a direct interaction. Using feedback appropriately confirms to the user that his action took place. Feedback can be visual, haptic, and audible. If feedback is too delayed, or does not exist, the user will become frustrated or lost after the action is completed. Lateral access widgets should use feedback that immediately follows the action.

Consider how feedback can be applied to:

Mapping

Mapping describes the relationship between two objects and how well we understand their connection. We’re able to create this relationship when we combine the use of our prior knowledge with our current behaviors. To quickly recall these relationships, we develop cognitive heuristics, or cultural metaphors. These metaphors reinforce our understanding of the relationship of object and its function.

Some common metaphors you can use to access information on mobile devices are:

Constraints

Restrictions on behavior should be appropriately implemented to eliminate or reduce performance error while laterally accessing content. Consider using the boundaries of the display (edges and corners) during gestural and scroll and select navigation. The edges and corners provide an infinite area to move our fingers or curser over. This can significantly reduce the amount of time to navigate across pages. Consider this effect when using a circular or closed navigation structure.

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: