We’ve been designing some new components here at Convio lately, and one of those is what we’ve affectionately been calling “The Disclosinator” (adding -ator to the end of words makes you sound cool).  The Disclosinator is designed to…well, to disclose things.  But really what it does, or at least what it does first, is to hide things.  It’s plain-jane progressive disclosure:  the page loads, some functionality is hidden, and users can click to expose disclosinate it.

But here’s the funny thing — in usability testing, very experienced users of the system are discovering functionality they never knew existed because we’ve hidden it. Mind you, this is functionality that has existed for years, and users who have been using the system for years.

Ok, I hear you, I hear you out there.  You’re saying that it’s not because it’s hidden at all, it’s just users doing what users do during usability testing, which is to poke around and click on new things.  And maybe you’re right, maybe it’s just the novelty of it all.   What remains true is that hiding some functionality with progressive disclosure, at least in laboratory settings, actually makes it easier to find.