Yes, you bet. I can relate to this, yet I wonder if most people (within our generation or not) would agree? I love having a digital collection of just about everything. There’s a (rather broad) topic in of itself: the advantages and disadvantages of digital media versus physical media and the psychological effects on Human-Computer Interaction. Perhaps, I need to go research.

The lateral movement is not going to be required, its purpose is to provide depth if/when needed. The up/down vertical movement operates like a typical linear vertical scrolling page. Any innerlinks, hypertext, and/or sub content will be horizontal, and that horizontal movement is not linear in terms of the content. To give an example, you may click on an in text link that will bring you to a specific horizontal section then return back to the vertical site.

Following the path in the prototype would be reading/viewing everything in its intended order, once put to use you would scroll up and down and only go left when you wanted more, think of the lateral movement as a more option.

It may help to see it like this

A | a1 | a2 | a3 | a4
B
C | c1
D

A user could view A,B,C,D or A, a2, B, C, c1, D etc etc.

I didn’t feel right for days after watching Cloud Atlas!

GREAT dialog, wonderful questions and suggestions. I applaud all three of you for the conversation. Rhett, this is taking shape well. You are really pondering your ideas and following through on them. I am really looking forward to seeing these evolving.

I know that I have become increasingly conscious of a waning attention span as I work on the computer and find that I combat some of this by printing what I need to read (including the posts you are all making) in order to sit quietly to digest. What this means, I am not sure. (perhaps that I am simply overwhelmed by the digital environment at times … or that my ‘retina’s are burning and my vision blurred’ … something that caught my attention above.

I also am a print person … I should send you an image of my library. I think containing the ‘dynamic page’ is a strong direction so as to reduce this fragmentation. I will be reading your research with great interest and care, I assure you.

Excellent work here.

LWF

Thanks for the resources on Bifocal Displays, I skimmed it LOL, but that research should come in very handy as I move forward. I am already overwhelmed by information today, and after a mindless break I will dive into that and your Google article.

New generations are losing the ‘book’ skillsets daily. But, I still love the feel and comfort of a book, I think I spend so much time online and designing for the web I find it a refreshing escape. Our lack of concentration is frighteningly becoming clear. But what you stated made me wonder if the abundance of anxiety and sleep disorders today could partly stem from this problem as well.

Thanks for the comment and resources, I will follow up on this when I can see words again LOL.

Believe me I feel your frustration. The problem with most of our software is, well its soft. Dreamweaver wants to be labeled for professionals yet they secretly cater to the novice. There has yet to be a platform that can automate responsive design let alone adaptive design and any attempt of doing so creates a code nightmare. I hardly ever use Dreamweaver anymore and have turned over to Notepad+++.

There are so many problems with how we approach responsive sites I wont even begin to list them. But to sum it up, responsive sites are not cool or flashy, so many designers go for the wow factor, “resize your browser and watch what happens”, and they are missing the point. The real value lies not in the ability to restructure but in the ability to maintain consistency across devices. Graphic control is certainly there, it just becomes much more technical, in fact I would go as far to say the web has much more graphic control then print ever dreamed of. With knowledge of breaking points we can restructure, adapt, and maintain a design across a infinite range of viewports. If you ever work on themes for UI’s you will realize you have so much control you feel like you have none LOL.

Anyways before I write a book here, I tend to look at the screen as dynamic paper, and if we treat break points much like we treat paper size or formats, we can begin to become overwhelmed by the complexity of control. I developed a boilerplate that uses a responsive twelve column grid with a typographic baseline and defined ratios rather then fixed dimentions to carry a design across the sea of devices, the control we can achieve is sickening.

Now ‘above the fold’ design does feel like a million years ago, in my line of work I call it ‘above the scroll’. I hate the term, is such an antiquated idea, a lot has changed since 1999 when the word browser was was scary let alone the awful sound of the model dialing up. But today we know what a browser is and how to use it. Still when we talk against it people get the panties in a bunch. No one is afraid of a scrolling, actually they do it excessively, we need to lay off the wheel if anything. With such large screens, rising pixel density, and itty bitty mobile devices the fold has vanished. It is impossible to fix a dimension to it. Users want to scroll…even pagination is dying, you just have to give them a reason to.

Unidirectional flows are also a relic of the past, and I wonder if touch screen technology is what is leading us toward an omnidirectional flow. The problem with omnidirectional navigation of information is that if not done right it leads to fragmentation, but that again just put the focus on the content organization, content is king.

Let me know what you thought of the protoype!

I found Helfand’s article, “Dematerialization of Screen Space,” as with a few articles that I read from time to time, modeled after an idea that I once had, but that I had no idea of how to articulate it. Kudos on the Rolio pet project. I recall in the early ’00s, sites that were primarily Flash-based had succeeded Helfand’s vision of a limitless border, implementing navigation that emulated an endless, linear progression. Now, I see the same thing with mobile apps, sans Flash. Ironic.

Robert Spence and Mark Apperly explain Bifocal Display – which can be thought of as “stretching or distorting information space.” In 1981, Spence and Apperly tested a touch-sensitive, scrolling interface within a confined space: http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/bifocal_display.html

On a related note, I recently read an online article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” which provides an account of how reading tendencies have changed because of our expectations from the Internet search: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

As Carr (the author) states, “A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after… Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.”

Carr also admits that he can no longer retain concentration when reading books. After reading his article, I found myself with the same problem. Lately, I cannot read more than a page or two in a book, without thinking of something else that distracts my focus. My dependency on technology might also contribute toward the problem of constantly thinking, which creates tangents and therefore is the reason I’m distracted. Scanning text has become more of a habit as a result as well. However, when it comes to design, I almost always thrive the most when creating or involved with large scope, time-intensive projects.

Ok, I lost my train of thought (kidding). I’ll need to dig deeper upon providing polished feedback, but I hope to stimulate the topic further.

– Matt