Re: breadcrumb and poker (usability >> accessibility?)

At 02:10 AM 2003-04-25, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:

>has anyone seen something similar to the following? or have a view.
>for clarity to this audience this is a text version, we'll be using 
>graphics if we use it at all.
>
>Home | Media | Music | jazz | Pop | classic | soul | country

I would think that you would want, especially in graphics for your audience,
to show the change in the kind of connection.  Some examples from the graphic
layout of text would be

Home
  Media
   Music
    jazz
    Pop
    classic
    soul
    country

or

Home >> Media >> Music
     ___________/      \__________
   /                              \
   jazz | Pop | classic | soul | country

or

Home >> Media >> Music >>
   jazz | Pop | classic | soul | country

.. but the graphical metaphors are more like the middle one: how you show 
an expanded
subset concurrently with the breadcrumb trail down to the scope of the 
expanded view.

You want to distinguish parent:child connections from sibling:sibling 
connections in the
graphical presentation of the topic graph.

One common metaphor would be to take the version of "what is this person 
thinking" bubble
from cartoon conventions, where the leader from the head of the person to 
the 'thought
domain' bubble is a sequence of progressively larger (toward the final 
bubble) empty
bubbles.  That is to say you would represent Home with a most-shrunken 
icon, Media with
a slightly larger version of its icon, Music with the largest scale of 
these icons, and
the jazz, Pop, classic, soul and country icons would not be in a row but in 
a bubble with
a border styling that terminates the sequence of the graded border stylings 
of the above
size-progressive icons.  Or wrap the ancestor-topic icons in bubble 
outlines that grade
up to but resemble the final bubble outline.

Al


Al

>the poker aspect allows the user to see what other topics are siblings 
>with the current one, which would be pop in this case, and reach them with 
>a single click.
>
>thanks
>
>Jonathan

Received on Friday, 25 April 2003 10:02:50 UTC