Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Navigation Guidelines
Navigation systems are essential components to visual representation of
information on a Web site. Better known as buttons or links, navigation allows
the user accessibility to the site content. The design of the navigation requires
an understanding of the structure of the site. By creating a comprehensive
content outline, you should have a pretty good understanding of the basic site
structure. An information flowchart defines a product's structure. Once a
flowchart exists, a lot of the navigation design work has already been done
(Kristoff & Satran, 1995).
In their topic
Interactivity by Design
, Kristoff and Satran (1995) offer three
main thoughts to good navigation design.
Minimize travel: create the simplest and shortest path between
two points, minimize depth: create a hierarchy with the fewest
possible levels (extra levels mean extra travel steps), minimize
redundancy: avoid creating multiple paths to the same place
from the same screen, this causes confusion about which to use.
(Kristoff & Satran, 1995, p.42)
Navigation relies on access. According to Kristoff and Satran (1995), there are
two levels of access:
•
Access to a new topic (category)
•
Access within a topic (sub category)
In this topic, I refer to topics as headers or categories — main navigation,
specifically. Sub topics are sub navigation and are placed under main navigation
items. Keeping the user occupied is easy if you provide them access that is
obstacle free.
The clarity of access and navigation is something that tends to get lost in modern
Web designs that overdo navigation. Navigation should not be inconspicuous
to the user. It should not be so blatant that it distracts the user from the content.
We will now look at the factors which affect usability.
