Navigation_Guidelines

Control "gee.wav" Jim Carey from Ace Ventura

Principles of Navigation

Navigation Basics

Navigation is an important element of site usability. Successful sites have navigational schemes that are easy to use and understand. Visual design cannot overcome poor navigation design.

Navigation refers to all of the ways that users can move around a site and understand where to go. Navigation design is revealed in the appearance and functionality of the menus, links, buttons, and toolbars on your pages.

Generally, it is difficult for site users to perceive the structure because only one page is seen at a time. That makes it difficult to place a single page in the context of the remaining site content. Hyperlinks make is likely for users to get lost unless obvious and understandable landmarks are provided. Two challenges in designing the navigation scheme for our website are to ensure that users:

Understand the organization of the site
Can move around easily.

Well-designed navigation provides quick and easy movement between the various components of a website. The navigational elements on every web page should answer these basic questions:

Where am I now?
Where did I come from?
Where can I go from here?

Here are a few methods to help site users answer the three basic questions

Provide a simple hierarchical tree structure.
Allow easy movement to important site components.
Provide a home base.
Use recurring navigation tools on all pages.
Provide page numbers for sequential pages.
Provide and update feedback that shows where the user is in a site (e.g., a breadcrumb trail).
Provide on-demand aids that illustrate the user's location within a site (e.g., site map, table of contents).

Krug's Trunk Test

Steven Krug (2000) provides an acid test for good Web navigation which is called the Truck Test. The following questions should be answered from every page.

What site is this? (Site ID)
What page am I on? (Page name)
What are the major sections of this site? (Sections)
What are my options at this level? ( Local navigation)
Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here” indicator)
How can I search? (Site search and Internet search)

Sample Trunk Test Report

Steven Krug's Truck Test principles were applied to Ford Motor Company, Drugstore.com, and PBS.org to create a Sample Trunk Test Repor t.

Navigation and Wayfinding Resources (Kays, 2005)

Applying the trunk test (Krug, 2000) only scratches the surface in analyzing navigation. When reading through class postings and Krug's chapter on "Street Signs and Breadcrumbs," I apply navigation to a design theory called "wayfinding." Wayfinding is a term applied in architecture, however, it can also been seen in computer science, information architecture, cognitive science, environmental psychology, and urban planning. In addition, navigation and wayfinding also relate to other theories such as Maslow's “hierarchy of human needs,” and Hall's and Sommer's “human factor and proxemics.”

Here are some fantastic links on the topic. Many of the links discuss the overlap of wayfinding and navigation.