The Fold and Its Receding Relevance
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
Milissa Tarquini has an article on Boxes and Arrows titled Blasting the Myth of the Fold which deserves some acclaim. Backed up by reasonable data it comes back to something most of us have been coming to realise for quite some time – users do know how to scroll. The vast majority of users in any case.
It is always a healthy thing to look back at the golden geese of our stock and trade to reassess whether norms and best practice have changed. Of course they have and I’d be surprised to find otherwise. There is not only a movement in the technology field and academic research but also a movement from one generational dominance to the next – generation Y into the Click-and-Go kids breaking into the workforce and suddenly gaining their own economic power. So the world changes and our expectations need to be fluid enough to rationalise and adapt. In the case of the fold I think most people had come to believe the relevance of the fold had diminished significantly – only couldn’t prove so.
