August 2007
Beginner
416 pages
12h 16m
English
Content preview from Designing Web NavigationBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 6. Evaluation
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A common goal in navigation design is to create effortless interaction with information. Navigation should be "invisible" to the user. Measuring its effectiveness is therefore problematic: it's difficult to demonstrate the value of something that's at its best when you don't notice it.
At the same time, navigation is deceptively complex. The thousands of pages you've provided access to, the numerous relationships you've established between different pieces of content, and the smooth interaction detailed in countless flowcharts all get reduced to a handful of links. The navigation on any one page is just a small portion of a larger system, which is sometimes hard to grasp.
What's more, many variables—from technical performance to graphic design—potentially affect the success of navigation. Showing cause and effect is sometimes difficult. For example, if visitors don't use a navigation option that could potentially help them, is it because they didn't see it or because they didn't understand the label? Making that option bigger won't help if the label is wrong.
Ultimately, the success of navigation is relative: what's good for one site might be catastrophic for another. Nonetheless, there are overarching guidelines that hold true across most situations. This chapter reviews them and introduces methods for evaluating whether your site hits the mark.
QUALITIES OF SUCCESSFUL NAVIGATION
The following ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.