Principlev1
Design intermediate navigation levels to answer questions
Design intermediate navigation levels to answer questions users actually ask during search, not categories that made sense during filing.
Why This Is a Principle
Derives from Goals as Perceptual Filters (goals define relevance), Meaning as Receiver Construction (meaning constructed by receiver), and Schemas as Knowledge Organization Structures (schemas guide information processing). Intermediate layers fail when organized for the filer's context rather than the searcher's—this principle prescribes retrieval-time optimization.