Clutter
pieterh wrote on 20 Oct 2009 10:31
The Clutter pattern is conceptual and may not be feasible with Wikidot. It shows a personal (not collaborative) workspace in which recently used objects are larger and/or more visible than less used objects. Objects disappear into dots when totally abandoned. The user can zoom to explore old groups of objects. Clutter might work for the Dashboard project.
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page revision: 0, last edited: 20 Oct 2009 10:31
Reducing the saliency of lesser used objects will cause them to disappear from the user's mind even faster than if there were no "clutter reduction".
If we're talking pages here, then the saliency of the pages need to be changes to get the user to notice them again (and hopefully clean up). That's one reason random pages is good — it uses the curiosity motive to increase the saliency of old pages (ie, put it right in your face). It's also a good way of spot checking a large wiki.
Also, with pages, a recently edited pages page changes the saliency by making you aware of pages you have forgotten about — but someone else hasn't. :) I've heard this process of 'saliency infusement' called 'wiki-churn'.
If we're talking interface, then it's a wholly bad idea. Let's say we have a noob learning to drive a car and the brake shrinks the longer he doesn't use it. Eventually, it's just completely gone, and he only has one pedal to press when something scares the poop out of him.
This is how our mind works anyway, so this is why you find saliency forced on interface elements that the user needs rather than uses. Hell, just look at a good remote control. You press the on / off button only twice, but it's so important to get the experience started that you can't mistake it for any other button. Smart interface designers have charged the off / on button with pure, dripping saliency so that it just SCREAMS"HERE I AM."
Example: The 'post it!' button in this editor should have more salience than preview or cancel.1
— hartnell
Clutter does not apply to actions but to objects, and the original design (which I actually implemented as a desktop but could not find time to complete) shrunk and grouped documents (projects, files, links, etc.) over time, mapping how my real desktop (a kind of 3D chaos tunnel) works.
At the very least Clutter suggests that if we make a dashboard of wiki sites, then the most recently ones should be larger and more central than the rarely used ones. Again I've no idea how to automate this but perhaps a custom module would be needed.
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