Design Paradigms for Lots of Data

Theresa Neil (longtime friend, co-conspirator on Open Rico, Sabre UX team and various other projects) has posted her first blog :-) Yes folks there are still a number of really smart people who don't take the time to blog.

Anyway she has a very nice post about two design paradigms for navigating through lots of data.

• The Seek Paradigm: Have the user ask for what they want.
• The Show Paradigm: Display everything up front, and let the user explore and organize it.

The first is usually more prevalent on the web. The latter usually more prevalent on desktop or deeper web applications. Theresa lists 10 different patterns illustrating Seek and Show.