Tuesday 12 February 2013

Progressive Enhancement for Library Catalogues

I've just been reading Progressive Reduction, a post on LayerVault about a technique they use  when designing web apps.

The principle goes something like this...
When new users start with the app the interface has lots of helping hands; signposts showing how to do things. For instance, the buttons might have an icon and a label.  As people use the app more and more those signposts start to recede out of the design. After you have used a feature a number of times, for example, maybe the label drops out and the button only has an icon. Keep using the app and the icon might subtly change to be less obvious. The idea being that less clutter on the interface allows users to be more productive, but only once you know how the app works.

I started thinking about how this design principle might be implemented in library catalogues.