The process of organising information into related groupings in order to manage complexity and reinforce relationships in the information.
- Layering involves organising information into related groupings and then presenting only certain groupings at any one time.
- It is primarily used to manage complexity, but can also be used to reinforce relationships in the information.
2D layering:
- It involves separating information into layers such that only one layer of information can be viewed at a time.
- They can revealed in either a linear or non-linear fashion.
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Linear layers:
- They are useful when information has clear beginning, middle and end (ex: stories).
- They are revealed successively like pages in a book.
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Non-linear layers:
- They are useful when reinforcing relationship between the layers.
- They can be
- hierarchical - e.g., organisational chart - are revealed top-down or bottom-up
- parallel - e.g., - thesaurus - when information is based on the organisation of other information - are revealed through some correspondence with that organisation
- web - e.g., hypertext - useful when information has many different kinds of relationships within itself - are revealed through any number of associative linkages to other layers.
3D layering:
- Involves separating information into layers such that multiple layers of information can be viewed at a time.
- Three-dimensional layers are revealed as either opaque or transparent planes of information that sit atop one another (i.e., in a third dimension)
- Opaque layers are useful when additional information about a particular item is described without switching contexts (e.g., software pop-up windows)
- Transparent layers are useful when overlays of information combine to
illustrate conceptsorhighlight relationships(e.g: weather maps)
