Beausage

Michael Honey kindly pointed me to a new term: Beausage.

…a synthetic combination of the words beauty andusage, and describes the beauty that comes with using something. Metacool

This term describes what I've tried to imagine in the look of a loved folder. That there is useful information in the wear on objects by thousands of human hands doing the same thing. And that this information can actually be beautiful, and even aesthetically attractive in it's own right. For example, these 'desire lions' with hand-wear-polished noses, named from the existing term of 'desire paths' created by thousands of interactions. Image from Portigal.com

What's interesting to me is the value that 'goat tracks' and 'worn edges' have in the real world. They show us that there are popular paths, and show us the way to the the most popular objects and destinations. It's actually very 'web 2.0', leveraging the social web of human decisions. Of course, you don't *have* to follow the path, but knowing that many other already have is a strong cognitive influence. Also, the paths that people take are not always the ones laid out for them by designers, and can indicate better designs to the people in charge. You could imagine paths being worn into your desktop, showing where you've travelled a lot before, or paths worn into websites, showing the most popular sections, and paths to other sites. There is even more richness possible than in the real world, because in a computer simulation of wear'n'tear we can capture more data: the age of the decision, the time it took to make the decision, the time of day, how that person relates to us socially… the list goes on.

This image of a map of Florence, borrowed from Design with Intent, shows a real-world abstraction of travel to 2D. This map has a worn away 'You Are Here' section, with paths leading outwards. Why not on the web and desktop? You might argue against the idea, saying the web/desktop is too dynamic, that destinations move too often, or that interfaces evolve faster than desire paths could form. Either way, I'd love to find examples proving or disproving this idea.

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