Progressive disclosure is an
interaction design pattern used to make applications easier to learn and less error-prone. It does so by deferring some advanced or rarely-used features to a secondary screen.
A classic example of this pattern is the print dialog in
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
. While printing a page, the print dialog shows only a small subset of choices. If the user wants more advanced options, they can click the "Show Details" button to reveal these features in a secondary screen.
In the physical world, progressive disclosure is used by modern theme park designers. Long waiting lines for rides can scare away visitors, so only a small segment of the line is made visible from any vantage point. As people move ahead in line, they only get to see discrete portions of the entire line. This design makes the waiting a bit more bearable.
History
Kristina Hooper Woolsey
Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey is an American scholar and cognitive scientist known as the "mother of multimedia" for her pioneering work at the Apple Multimedia Lab anAtari Research Labs which she directed. Woolsey was a founding member of the Ap ...
, a founding member of the Apple Human Interface Group, wrote in 1985 what could be considered as the seminal idea for selectively disclosing to new users how a system works:
''"In the design of interfaces one must also consider carefully how one selectively informs a user about a particular system, providing well-chosen bits and pieces that can constitute a general understanding of a system."''
See also
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Disclosure widget
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Chunking (writing)
Chunking is a method of presenting information which splits concepts into small pieces or "chunks" of information to make reading and understanding faster and easier. Chunking is especially useful for material presented on the web because readers t ...
References
User interface techniques
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