My latest effort: http://www.ai2.com.au

Chase That is an extremely intriguing article. Thanks very much for sharing it. I am only half way through it but already there is much to think about.

I very much heed the warning about presuming “interactivity” as inherently good. Nothing should be presumed. To quote Ayn Rand, we should “never stop thinking.”

I find the comment “we put everything on its own page, because ‘it–™s fun to click on things’” to be unfairly simplifying the opposing viewpoint so that it is easier to deflate.

What all interactive designers should be trying to is to be dividing content along the lines that best aid the users desired learning curve. Establishing a hierarchy of information design and navigation that best supports a users need to browse, decide and learn.

I am still not convinced that preloaded or dynamically loaded click interfaces like dynamic flash or AJAX have the same “high cost” as traditional page load clicks. And I still think its a highly subjective position to place arbitrary values on scrolling over clicking.

In fact upon reexamination, I find most of the folios, whether one- or multi- page (mine included), to be doing as poor a job of giving users what they want to “learn” as the well played Amazon search results example in Magic Ink.

In a way, I can now recognize the under-performance of a “click-and-dive-in-one-at-a-time” scenario such as my own, in that in somewhat fails to visually aid a visitors preference to learn the most primary of information very rapidly. I still believe it makes it easier than most and provides the benefits of control and pacing that the one-pagers do not. There is an affordance to the medium of interactive design that is underused by designs that would perform equally well in print or on the screen.

As Kirk said, its good that new models are being tested and discussed critically. It’s not black and white or good and bad. It is very much a gradient of gray.

My brain is already buzzing on ideas of a hybrid of all the principles at play.

thanks for all your thoughts

After reading the Magic Ink article I completely buy into the “interactivity as a cost” theory. The Amazon re-design was a perfect example, made much better by providing more (pertinent and designed) information on the overview page.

I guess I’m still not sold on clicking being an inherently less desirable form of interactivity than scrolling by scrollbar, mouse position, or whatever. I would say “thinking” and “finding” are the activities to be avoided (“Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug made quite an impression on me). Scrolling seems better for browsing, clicking better for deciding. In the portfolio setting it seems ideal to have a “next” button that does not move from page to page. The user can park their mouse and click, click, click without taking their eyes off the content. (As in, “show me the next project… now the next”, compared to scrolling, “what project do I want to look at?” and having to fine-tune its position in the window to get everything in view.) Even better would be adding keyboard support to arrow, arrow, arrow (forward and backward).

Scrolling through a portfolio can be nice, but the execution is key. There has to be a middle ground between tiny thumbnails and images that barely fit in my laptop-sized browser. I’m sure some of the examples pull that off quite well, but I got tired of waiting for them to load on my slow connection. ;-)

At the risk of sounding argumentative, if the goal is to “get right to the point” which method does that better: a practically bottomless page filled with an entire portfolio’s worth of large images and text, or a series of pages that allow the user to select their area of interest? I guess that depends on the user. As a user I would generally vote for the latter. No surprise there, perhaps.

Chase, you’re right on about nothing being black and white in this discussion (is anything ever?). I like that the one-page approach is being tested; models need to be challenged. My opinion is that the one-page model is refreshing as a change of pace, but it is just as easily abused as any other method. I would love to see the principles of the one-page combined with a multi-page site, all in the spirit of improving the experience. Maybe if everyone reads the Magic Ink article we’ll be on our way.

Thanks for your insights!

Yes, you correctly point out that scrolling is a form of interactivity. IMO it “costs less” than clicking to a different page because there is less mental overhead in doing so. But that’s a side issue, because even if we place scrolling and clicking on equal footing, the solution would be to use the “get right to the point” strategy featured on this page and then implement paging only when no more samples will fit on a single page. This is a far cry from putting everything sanmple on it’s own page. Or perhaps Flash could be used to implement edge-based scrolling so that no clicking is required to scroll — here the interactive programming would be more parsimonious, not a flagrant display of programming.

Nothing is black and white in this model, of course. Even with a design like the one above, we may still want to have an extended details page available for users who click on any given sample. But the initial summary page would clearly do a better job of informating the user and taking advantage of her built–in visual hardware than a bunch of tiny boxes or text links where her only choice is to get overhwhelming detail based on guesswork, one item at a time.

I previously designed a portfolio for my company that isn’t much better. The user is presented with a list of categories, and then a list of summaries with pictures, and then can . It’s slightly better than the the “tiny boxes and cryptic links” approach, but only by a hair.

Chase

What doesn’t seem to be accounted for (beside my beloved page weight/bandwidth concern) is that browser size is limited and one page sites inevitably require a lot of scrolling. This is a type of interaction, so the question has to be asked: is scrolling through a mile-high page really a better experience than clicking among pages?

I think that your assumption that interactivity is some kind of inherent good is just wrong… and I had to be convinced of that myself, so don’t think I’m getting all high and mighty. You say, “One page folios are all the rage these days, cause they are so simple and easy to navigate. … Which I somewhat consider cheating in interactive design… Interactive design is all about how the designer does this without making the experience feel cumbersome and broken.”

Unfortunately, this bad assumption caused you to do a lot of work to underperform the sites featured here. Instead of arguing agsint the assumption myself, I want to point you (and everyone else) to the article that opened my eyes on this subject:

Magic Ink – Information Software and the Graphical Interface (http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/)

As a lifelong software developer and a computer scientist, it was a hard pill to swallow. But it changed my life and I am now producing much better interfaces with a different assumption: interactivity is a costly means to an end, something to be minimized within a given design.

Cheers… hope this was not a flame. You have a great eye and obviously some flash skilz too!

The work is indeed pageanty (beautiful imagery without explicitly showing design process and thinking), but I think the layouts can be provide the basis for richer portfolios that show greater depth in thinking. For example, I’d love to have seen the portfolios include early explorations, sketches, and rejected design directions. Unfortunately, I could not find one good example.

Most of the work above focus on visual design, illustration, and photography. Ironically, it was difficult to find good examples of interaction design portfolios. Can you think of any?