Saturday, June 8, 2002

Organizing a GUI like the Super Market organizes products I don't go to the store very often, mostly because it's just to damn annoying. Nothing seems to be in it's logical place. For example, today I went to pickup some Q-tips and cotton balls. I figured once I find the Q-tips the cotton balls should be real close. After all, they're both cotton products used in the bathroom. Well, after winding through 3 more aisles I finally stumbled on the cotton balls - next to the medical supplies. I've heard that stores intentionally don't organize things logically so you look around more and discover other products. This is also the reason they occasionally reorganize the store. Maybe this could be an innovated approach to designing GUIs: don't put things in their logical place. If your application needs to save a file, don't put the save menu item under the file menu item. Instead put the save under the help. That way people will need to wonder around the application just to save a file and thereby learn more about the application and discover other features. A Kinda interactive tutorial. 10:21:27 PM