From the course: Interaction Design for the Web

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Progressive disclosure

Progressive disclosure

From the course: Interaction Design for the Web

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Progressive disclosure

- We could all do with less complexity in our lives, and there are all sorts of people out there who will offer to help you declutter, get rid of the junk, and put the rest of the clutter into neatly labeled boxes of similar items in a cupboard so they're easy to access when you need them, but out of the way the rest of the time. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can do that with your interface, too. After you've got rid of the obviously useless parts of the interaction, you can put a lot of the clutter into neatly labeled groupings of similar items and place each group in an area of the screen that's out of the way most of the time, but then opens up when you need access to it. That technique is called progressive disclosure. Progressive disclosure takes many forms. It can be as simple as a learn more or related articles link, the plus symbol in a tree view, accordion interfaces through to suboptions and long forms and multipage wizard interfaces. It can be used to show every item…

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