Personal Object Space

Examples:

A physical desk, especially a messy one
Bookshelf
Public bulletin board (again, a physical one)
Iconified applications in some windowing systems and OSes

Bad Examples:

The Windows 95 task bar, which also contains iconified applications

Context: There are many things that the user needs ready access to, such as working surfaces, documents, objects, or tools. This is often useful in Sovereign Posture applications, especially those that are WYSIWYG Editors or integrated development environments; also, Pile of Working Surfaces is really a specialized example of this pattern.

Problem: How should the items in question be organized?

Forces:

The user should be able to arrange things in a way that works best for them, since they know more about how they work than the artifact's designer does.
If the user arranges a large set of items, they can better remember where things are than if the items were arranged for them.
The user wants a sense of ownership and control over the artifact, and substantial customization contributes to that sense.
It's tedious for the user to do all the item placement themselves, especially if they want precision or a sorting order.

Solution: Allow users to place things where they want, at least in one dimension but preferably in two. Start out with a reasonable default layout, however. Permit stacking, moving, grouping, aligning, "neatness" adjustments, sorting, and other layout operations. Do not capriciously rearrange the user's space -- only do automatic layout if the user specifically requests it!

Resulting Context: The artifact should maintain the user's layout between uses, so Remembered State is a natural next step; User Preferences and User's Annotations, other customization patterns, go hand-in-hand with this one. Good Defaults lets you design the initial layout well. Actions for Multiple Objects give the user greater efficiency as they manipulate items within the Personal Object Space.

Notes: -

Comments to: jtidwell@alum.mit.edu
Last modified May 17, 1999