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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Balancing Act

Balancing visual and structural complexity in interaction design (via Column Two) is an interesting article that shows how over-simplifying a design can harm usability rather than helping it.

It’s true that the more simple a page looks, the easier users can find information on it. But reducing visual complexity to make things pleasing to the eye by hiding critical information from users will inevitably increase structural complexity, and make it difficult for users to grasp and navigate the site.

It also includes a good debunking of the idea that users don’t like to scroll—in this age of wheel mouses I’ve never understood some people’s preference for multi-page articles over one page with a scroll bar. The article concludes that the real challenge is coming up with the proper balance between visual and structural complexity.

Posted 2nd October 2003 at 6:53 pm

This is Balancing Act by Simon Willison, posted on 2nd October 2003.

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3 comments

  1. This was a great article. It is very important that people do not associate minimalism with what he is saying though. Minimalism occurs when you take out what is not necessary and only leave that which is necessary. Hiding key elements of a page would obviously be necessary so therefore you are avoiding minimalistic design and just trying to be "cute".

    Scrivs - 2nd October 2003 19:19 - #

  2. I think that multiple page articles actually *never* have pleased users. It's just a dirty trick for editors to boost their page impressions and advertising revenues... :/

    Francois PLANQUE - 5th October 2003 20:29 - #

  3. I dunno, I remember being on a 56k line with no scroll wheel on my mouse and I definitely preferred to read an article page by page rather than wait 10 minutes for something long to load, only to realise that I didn't really want to read it or that it was the wrong one!

    These days though, I love my scroll wheel, I love my broadband download speed and I bloody hate articles in multiple pages!

    People are fickle ... you just can't win ;-)

    Meri - 6th October 2003 15:56 - #

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