The architecture of piles
Piles are a fixture of everyday life. We have piles of magazines, photos, and
bills. We make piles at home, at work, and at school. We are constantly
creating, rearranging, and flipping through piles.
Piles may seem simple, but they often have intricate architectures. Piles can
remind people of things to do, how information is related, or the steps to
follow in a complex task. Many piles have a definite sub-structure, while
others are merely a loose accumulation of related material. Some piles are left
“open” so that crucial information remains visible. Other piles are closed,
hiding the structural details to create a tidy appearance. There is no such
thing as “a pile.”
And yet, what’s important about piles is not the piles themselves, but how
they allow people to rapidly externalize information—putting knowledge from
their head into the world. People create piles to encode, track, and revise
their emergent understanding of an information space. This is especially true
when people create piles as part of cognitively-complex activities, such as
researching a new topic, rapidly reviewing documents, or completing their
taxes.
The architecture of piles suggests an intriguing direction for information
architecture. Current practice is characterized by formal architectures that
users must adapt to: navigation systems, organization schemes, and metadata
structures. In contrast, piles are ad-hoc, fluid, and informal. As a result,
people can easily adapt piles to spatially represent many aspects of
information-rich tasks. Digital piles that mimic and extend the key features of
physical piles could be powerful tools for helping people learn from, reason
with, and make sense of the information they encounter in the world.
In this talk, I will explore existing research on piles, especially when that
research involves digital piles and multi-touch digital surfaces. I will also
present research findings from a series of studies I have conducted on how
people create piles when they triage documents on an unfamiliar topic.
comments
