| Lessons of Three Dimensions
for the Web
by Luke Wroblewski We all work, play, and shop in a three-dimensional world. But when
it comes time to “jump” online and “surf” to
our favorite “sites”, the only thing with three dimensions
is our analogies. In fact, nearly all attempts to bring three dimensions
to the Web browser have met with little more than criticism
(most often for their increased complexity). Nonetheless, there are
plenty of ways our perception of Web content and interactions could
be enhanced with lessons from the third dimension.
Physical Cues
"When we're exploring on the Web, in some ways it even feels like
we're moving around in a physical space... But the Web is missing many
of the cues we've relied on all our lives to negotiate space: no sense
of scale, no sense of direction, no sense of location."
-Steve Krug, Don’t
Make Me Think
In the real world, holding a book in your hands tells you a lot about
it. Its thickness provides a clue as to how long it may take to read.
Its physical properties allow you to make sense of the material. The
front of the book will have a table of contents: there you can get a
quick overview. Want to see if something specific is discussed? Simply
flip to the back of the book and browse the index. If your entry shows
up twice, once on page 50 and again on pages 345-370, you might make
the assumption that the first passage is an overview of the concept,
and the later section provides more detailed information. These types
of physical cues come from our understanding of space and are sorely
missing online. When you decide to follow a hyperlink, you rarely know
how much information you’ll get, in what context it will be presented,
or where it resides.
Physical cues could also be used to influence emotional responses to
information and interactions. Edward T. Hall introduced proxemics, the
study of the perception and use of space, in his book The
Hidden Dimension. Hall “argued that differing cultural frameworks
for defining and organizing space, which are internalized in all people
at an unconscious level, can lead to serious failures of communication
and understanding.” If properly applied, however, space has the
potential to make interactions more meaningful (for instance, the concept
of closeness) and enjoyable.
Navigation Cues
"Many complaints about present systems are about trying to navigate.
Partial solutions such as "favorite locations" in Web browsers
have been created. But what we are truly better at is remembering landmarks
and positional cues, traits that evolution has bred into us and traits
that we can take advantage of in interface design."
-Jef Raskin, The
Humane Interface
Finding your way across cyberspace is no easy task. Your only navigational
cues are the occasional menu and a cryptic set of URLs. To make matters
worse, there are no landmarks (unless you count Google) to guide you
and it’s often quite difficult to understand the overall information
space. (How big is this Web site? Have I seen everything yet?) The same
is true for Web applications: a lack of a macro (big picture) view of
your interactions in most Web-based services leaves users buried underneath
several layers of menus and no sense of orientation.
Our understanding of an environment usually begins with noticing and
remembering landmarks. Therefore, it’s not hard to see why people
get lost when confronted with menu upon menu: there just are no clear
positional cues to guide them. Few of us have a map-like understanding
of our physical environments or of Web sites. Instead, we rely on paths
or sequences, sometimes even stories, to get us to our destination.
These routes are illuminated by landmarks that keep us on course and
provide valuable feedback on our progress.
A two dimensional system is hard pressed to provide the kind of spatial
cues that make path finding comfortable and memorable. Perhaps this
is why after nearly eight years of Web site design, users still complain
about getting lost within interactions and information.
2.5 Dimensions
A lot of the aversion to three-dimensional interface designs stems from
poor implementations of the concept. Products like 3DNA
Desktop seemingly arbitrarily apply three-dimensional space to familiar
interface metaphors. 3DNA Desktop actually turns your Windows operating
system into a loft
or a video game world
gone wrong.
Instead of a direct application of three-dimensional space, interface
designs can benefit from applying concepts from three dimensions. For
instance, a spatial interface that introduces “depth” could
provide the ability to zoom in and out of information or interactions.
Zooming out would allow users to see the context of specific information
and its relationships to other content. A broader sense of context is
rarely present on the Web. The lack of space, direction, and scale prevents
us from understanding the bigger picture and the connections between
various information and interactions. Zooming in, on the other hand,
could increase the level of detail. (Jef Raskin
discusses a similar approach in his description of ZoomWorld, an
alternative navigation interface concept.)
A three dimensional presentation of data or interactions can also reveal
trends or similarities within information and provide users with the
ability to directly interact with the data. Direct
manipulation is not a new interface design principle, but our ways
of manipulating information are limited by the lack of a third dimension.
In fact, we tend to spend more time interacting with buttons and scroll
bars than actual content.
Useful and usable three-dimensional Web interfaces may not show up
anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean we currently have to confine
ourselves to only two dimensions. Any Web site or Web application that
layers information is already bordering on 2.5D by introducing depth.
Developing ways to present physical and navigational cues, providing
context and macro (big picture) views of information and interaction,
and allowing more direct interaction with information spaces are all
small three-dimensional steps we can take today to benefit Web users
tomorrow.
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