Continuous Transition

Specialization of ContinuousFeedback?

Problem: The traditional WimpInterface involves numerous magic events like clicking on an icon object, magically creating a window of some kind. It's difficult to learn and difficult to use.

Context: You have to represent complex or important transitions between states.

Forces: Human users are easily disoriented by abrupt or discontinuous transitions.

Solution: Make the representation of the transition, or the transition itself, continuous. Show every step along the way.

Examples: When you recall bookmarked locations in BlackAndWhite, the game merely moves the camera to that location for you, without teleportation or magic. Human interactions with physical reality are based around continuous transitions; eg, navigating a city.

This also applies to ZoomableUserInterfaces; instead of having sharp boundaries around the lens, use continuous zooming with a plateau around a focus.

ContinuousTransition helps enable ProgressiveDisclosure.

CategoryPattern CategoryUserInterface