Universal Principles of UX

69

Don’t get gimmicky with navigation.

The global navigation is almost always on the top left of the interface, the utility navigation on the top right (which typically consists of things like sign in, add to cart and search), and the footer on the bottom (which either repeats the global navigation or has items like contact and subscribe). This is not a coincidence. It’s because the first interfaces were in English—which reads from left to right and top to bottom—and not in Chinese or Arabic.

The way we design interfaces—and what we are used to and what we expect—has changed quite a lot since the first websites of the ‘90s, but one thing has remained the same, the positioning of the navigation. Put a website from 1999 next to a website from ...