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Mark Baker says:"... We have to start thinking in terms of how to manipulate the data for the reader and present them with results."
Note that I have manipulated the data (how much of Mark's statement I want to quote) to help me present a result (my argument). That statement, taken alone, sounds like a recipe for propaganda and censorship. My real point being, sometimes it's appropriate for the reader to see a fuller account of the underlying information. In my experience, a lot of what we lump under "user experience" amounts to a dumbing down of the information. If the information is dumbed down, then so am I... I don't like that.
I do agree that timetables are a limiting example, because they're fairly simple. OTOH, even in that case there are times when you want to browse. I guess we CAN assemble behaviors that satisfy browsing through some dynamic effect. I certainly HOPE we can, because the real estate isn't there to support a full table. But the question is, what are people actually doing to satisfy browsing in this kind of situation, and how satisfactory is it?
Example... TOC. On a desktop screen, you can show the whole tree, and expand/contract as you wish. On a phone you show one level of nodes at a time, and indicate whether a node has children. You can navigate the tree, but you have lost the overall view of the tree. Ok, so that has become the standard for a TOC on a phone. What are the standards for a complex table that might have vertical or horizontal straddles? How do you satisfy browsing that information so that I don't need to KNOW what I want before I can actually get it?
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