Huffman User Interfaces

Introduction

In the realm of data compression, one of the fundamental techniques that everyone learns is Huffman coding. The premise of this simple technique is to assign shorter codes for things that are mentioned more frequently, and longer codes for less common things. Another important feature of this technique is that codes are no longer than they have to be - you wouldn't use a 6 bit symbol if a 2 bit one would suffice.

You can apply the same technique to the user interface of your application - frequent tasks should require the fewest actions ( keystrokes, mouse moves, clicks etc) on the users part.