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 relationships as (see Chapter 3, Display of Information):

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.

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: