The more I see the less I know

OK world, I decided I gave you the silent treatment long enough; I hope you learned your lesson...

Today I decided to finally try to live up to the expectation my blog's name has raised in the blogosphere, I hear some bloggers actually went on a hunger strike until I do. To those, I recommend Schulz catering.

The the's "slow emotion replay" begins with this posts' title; this quote is also ascribed to John Lennon and appears in Red Hot Chili Pepper's song Snow (hey oh).

At first this seems reverse to common sense - the more I see I would expect that I also know more. This reasonning can be explained as follows: since the more I see, the more likley I am to witness contradicting facts (or things I cannot understand), my certain knowledge ("what I know for sure" as appears in John Lennon's original quote), lessens.

In Human Factors, we couldn't hope for a better slogan. Ideally, users (of any system) would like to be presented with only the information they need and exactly when they need it.
Less information than needed will result in an inability to react; but the more common case is too much presented information, or information clutter.

Information clutter is a common usability issue that stems from the tendency of system designers to prefer presenting information even when it's relevance is doubtful. The result is overloaded systems where the user has a hard time distinguishing the important information relevant for her goal from irrelevant information. In that sense, the redundant information obscures the information the user needs. The more she sees, the less she know for sure.

While different users (e.g. novices vs. experts) in different situations need different levels of information, it is the system designer's job to be able to identify these users and these situation so that only the right amount of information is shown.

While this identification requires quite complex mechanisms, to the users the system is simple to use.

Seeya!
Ben