Progressive Disclosure - History of Progressive Disclosure

History of Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure is a concept that has been around since at least the early 1980s. The technique caught the attention of user interface specialists with Jack Carroll's lab work at IBM (1983), where he found that hiding advanced functionality early on led to an increased success of its use later on. The approach dubbed "training wheels" is one of the few references validating the technique. Carroll and Rosson (1997) pointed out that no empirical evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of progressive disclosure and that the training wheels approach only studied a "single computer application (word processor) and a single interface style (menu based control)". While independent usability studies and consultancy research (including our own) has shown that appropriate usage of the technique is valuable, more empirical research is clearly required.