better than reality

Avoid virtual reality gimmicks (say, a virtual shopping mall) that emulate the physical world. The goal of Web design is to be better than reality. If you ask users to "walk around the mall", you are putting your interface in the way of their goal. In the physical world, you need to schlepp between shops; on the Web you teleport through cyberspace directly to your destination using a navigational topology that conforms to user needs (assuming good information architecture, of course). (Nielsen 1998)

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(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001