Mooers' Law

Say what?

In 1959, six years before Gordon Moore came up with what would become Moore's law, computer pioneer and entrepreneur Calvin Mooers formulated his:

"An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it."

From the book "Ambient Findability" by Peter Morville:

Sometimes we don't want new information, he [Mooers] argued — less is more. [Mooers] coined the terms "information retrieval" and "descriptors," wrote some of the earliest interactive programming languages, and founded the Zator company to develop and market his ingenious automatic punch card information retrieval system. But despite his significant contributions, Mooers is little known outside the information science community, and neither is his law.

Even within this small community, Mooers' Law is often misinterpreted as a maxim about the importance of information system usability. In the words of online information industry pioneer and Dialog founder Roger Summit, "Mooers' Law tells us that information will be used in direct proportion to how easy it is to obtain." Though this insight is accurate and important, it's not what Calvin Mooers had in mind. Consider the author's explanation of his own law:

"It is now my suggestion that many people may not want information, and that they will avoid using a system precisely because it gives them information.... Having information is painful and troublesome. We have all experienced this. If you have information, you must first read it, which is not always easy. You must then try to understand it.... Understanding the information may show that your work was wrong, or may show that your work was needless.... Thus not having and not using information can often lead to less trouble and pain than having and using it."

Unfortunately, nobody pays much attention to Calvin Mooers these days. And yet, Mooers' Law only becomes more relevant with every advance of Moore's Law. Fast, cheap processors powered a personal computer revolution and enabled the information explosion we call the Internet. Half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress. That's how much new information we create in a year — 92% of it stored on magnetic media. It's time we shifted our focus from creating a wealth of information to addressing the ensuing poverty of attention.

Because Moore's Law doesn't apply to the human brain. In fact, we haven't upgraded our wetware much in the past 50,000 years. Technology moves fast. Evolution moves slow. In recent years, the friction between these layers has given birth to usability, user experience and user-centered design. Make it simple. Make it easy. Don't make me think!

Calvin Mooers reminds us that design of a useful information system requires a deep understanding of users and their social context. We cannot assume people will want our information, even if we know they need our information. Behind most failed web sites, intranets and interactive products lie misguided models of users and their information-seeking behavior. Users are complex. Users are social. And so is informaton.

.....................

You could find worse uses for $19.77 than getting your own copy of "Ambient Findability."