I don't know of a study as such, but something solid to back up your argument could be #6 in Jakob Nielsen's "Ten Usability Heuristics", namely "Recognition, no Recall".
[ http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html ] I mean, if something is actually hidden, the user *might* stumble across it, but after that, what? They would have to RECALL where that area was in order to display that piece of the interface again. That's surely asking too much. I don't know how much clutter we are talking about here, but minimising interface areas seems like a better approach. The suggestion that users will find hidden areas intuitively seems a bit optimistic to me, too... Intuitively, I wouldn't move my mouse pointer around apparently empty space, thinking "Oooh, maybe this would be a good spot for a button... "! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=49270 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
