This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
Blink UI
I listened to an MP3 or Malcom Gladwell's keynote at SXSW during my lunch break today. He was talking about his book, Blink, specificaly about how people make quick decisions, and how we could do it better.
One conclusion was that people make better decisions when given less information. This is in direct opposition to our cultural assumption that we do better gathering all possible information before deciding something. He gave an example of ER doctors who need to quickly decide whether some one suffering from chest pains is having a heart attack. Researchers discovered that Doctor's accuracy is much higher if they are only given 4 pieces of information - EKG, whether the pain is persistant or intermittent, and a couple others. All other information - the patient's history of heart failure, if the patient is obese, if they'd been up all night smoking crack, etc - only clouded their success rate.
So I wonder if this has a good equivalent in UI design. In most projects I work on the people using the tool are generally busy and speeding through the use of this tool or website as quickly as possible. So my job is to show them as little information as possible for them to pick which link they will click next, or for them to get accomplish their current goal. In the case of the grade book, we need to show a teacher the right amount of information for them to judge the performance of their class or an individual student. Should they give student X an A- or a B+? Was the midterm too hard?
How will I know if I'm providing the right info? Should I show them photos of the students, or does that introduce a possibility of unintended bias? It's pretty intimidating, especially since I honestly make my decisions on what include in the UI based on my own 'blink' judgements. I draw on my experience, and the information we gathered form the requirements gathering process. Is that information too much or too little?
I just convinced myself to read that book.