In reaction to, yet another, very thought provoking post by Matt[IC] about Neurolinguistic programming, which is based on the notion that people are either visual, aural or tactile, in which he uses this as the basis for examining fashion trends and haircuts! There is an interesting parrallel with this to the notion of learning styles which was being discussed in the IDcafé.


Modal Navigation or Signal to Speed

Depending on the mode of transport you use, you will take:
- different routes
- receive (and be aware of) different signals
- travel at different speeds
and therefore
- see different things
(or at least see them from a different perspective - from a distance or only a fleeting glance)
and
- be able to do different things (stop, change direction, talk to others, etc.)


Providing different modes of transport through an online space/place could help different types of users to find what they are looking for. Or to put it another way provide different approaches depending on the needs or previous experience of the user (a new comer might prefer a guided tour and experienced user go straight to the overview - to see what is new or has been changed). This is similar to IAwiki's RoadMaps and the Nodes provided as a way to navigate through Engines for Educators - hy~lee™ recommended.

One could envisage the following modes:

Walking - slow, controllable, flexible
Taxi - (paid for) personal route, enhanced with specific (if not necessarily accurate) local information, access to areas that other aren't allowed into (bus routes), comfort, mode can be shared,
Bus - predetermined fixed route, with group of people,
Cycle - fairly fast, controllable, flexible (can deviate from prescribed routes and ignore certain restrictions ;), dangerous?
Motor bike - fast, dangerous, restricted view (because of the helmet)
Car - fast, limited flexibility, certain restrictions, unfriendly?
Tube - very limited view of environment (all about getting there not about seeing what is along the way)
Train - unique (if limited in other ways) view of environment, shared mode
Plane - high level overview, fast but inflexible (hard to turn), shared (if more exclusive) mode

This is (of course) not an exhaustive list. And there could of course be subsets of these - different bus routes, a mountain bike or a shared taxi ride.

The key to this is not only how you move round but what you see whilst travelling. Certain signals or levels of detail will be excluded or enhanced depending on the mode. A slow walk will show you all the detail (who wrote it, how long is it, when did they write it, what is it about) where as a fast biker will see only the long or highly rated messages or maybe the particularly active spaces…


I couldn't post this yesterday - as Blogger was down - I wonder if this was as I predicted a result of the all the Pyra-Google reactions and consequent attention...?