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Historical Trails

maggieappleton.com · 1,581 words · saved by 1 readers

Giving people a visible, useful trail of where they've been over the course of an exploratory journey Whenever I'm on a punishingly long flight and feeling the ache of being crunched in a seat for a dozen hours, I soothe myself by opening up the live flight map. The tiny airplane trail is reassuring. We are making progress. We are on track. We will one day be free of this plane. When I'm on a journey through a dark swamp of information, I want that same sense of reassurance that flight map gives me. I want to know: Most interfaces are decent at the first two. We have lots of patterns that tell me where I am right now, like active items, focus states, and progress bars. that indicate our current ”position” in a process or navigation space. We also have good patterns for guiding me towards a known destination. Patterns like steppers and clear copywriting on buttons telling me what's coming next. It's a bit trickier when neither the interface nor I knows the final destination, as happens

The Context Whenever I’m on a punishingly long flight and feeling the ache of being crunched in a seat for a dozen hours, I soothe myself by opening up the live flight map. The tiny airplane trail is reassuring. We are making progress. We are on track. We will one day be free of this plane. Yes of course I wrote this opening while on a 14-hour flight. A reassuring in-flight progress tracking map – Source: Magalie L'Abbé When I’m on a journey through a dark swamp of information, I want that same sense of reassurance that flight map gives me. I want to know: Where I am right now Where I’m going

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