Designing Web Navigation

Part II. A Framework for Navigation Design

Part II presents design phases that together form a framework, or a set of practices for solving the problems of navigation design. Though these phases suggest a linear approach, in practice, the actual steps of navigation design are rarely continuous. Instead, you'll move back and forth between them.

Consider the phases as presented in Part II to be modes of thinking, rather than blocks of time on a project plan. The progression of activities moves from abstract to concrete. This suggests that you should try to keep your work at the relative same state of completeness. For instance, it's generally not advisable to develop icons before an analysis of the business or before information architecture has been determined.

Part II begins with a chapter on evaluating navigation (Chapter 6) prior to actual design work for a reason: you must know how navigation will be measured for success before you begin designing. The remaining four chapters reflect a progression of thought in designing navigation:

• Phase 1, Chapter 7: The goal in this phase is to understand the problem you're trying to solve before setting out to design.

• Phase 2, Chapter 8: The purpose here is to determine how to best structure the site. Even if the site's architecture already exists, you'll still need to understand basic principles of organization and categorization to design an appropriate navigation.

• Phase 3, Chapter 9: In this phase, you define how the navigation system will ...