Humane Interface, The: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

6-2. Better Navigation: ZoomWorld

If you wanted to design a navigation scheme intended to confuse, you might begin by making the interface mazelike. The maze would put you in a little room with a number of doors leading this way and that. The doors' labels are usually short, cryptic, or iconic, and they may change or disappear,^[1] depending on where you've been. You cannot see what is on the other side of a door except by going through it, and when you have gone through, you may or may not be able to see the room you've just left. There may not be a way to get directly back at all. Some rooms may contain maps to part or all of the system of rooms, but you have to keep track of the relationship between the map representation and the rooms you ...