As we are moving more into a digital world, I appreciate Whitelaw’s thoughts on how our means of the digital experience should be more accessible. Whitelaw proposes a generous interface, as opposed to an interface that is entirely a “lookup” search, giving us a more “exploratory search”. With this, our data is given or shared and is very large. When our data is given to us, we don’t have to be experts on what we are looking for. Rather, we now have the opportunity to learn about a collection and develop a sense of context. This gives a better experience to those who are unfamiliar with a certain topic.

Even though our data collections now are very large, they don’t display the data in a compact form. This data is much easier to display in a general search interface, but can be resolved through facets that breakdown the information within a collection. Although more difficult of a task, it is worth the transition in order to create a better experience for all users, not just those wh oare already experts.