The present invention relates to a system and methodology for controlling and presenting information to users in an automated manner. Sets of information items accessible by users from computer workspaces (e.g., from within and/or outside an application) are automatically hidden or reduced from view in order to facilitate user processing of a determined and/or reduced subset of information. The reduced subset is created from decision-theoretic considerations of the expected costs and benefits of hiding or mitigating information items from view or presentation while leaving more likely items or objects exposed for efficient access by users. The display of the ideal set of items takes into consideration controls that allow for the access of views that reveal sets of less likely items through one or more gestures. The control of the optimization may be facilitated by preference-assessment interfaces that allow a designer and/or a user to assess preferences about the costs of reviewing sets of items of different lengths and about the costs of gestures to reveal additional items.