Chapter 3. Zen and the Art of Navigation

The key to being able to find your way around an application you’re using for the first time is understanding how the site is structured, and these first few moments spent getting oriented are pivotal to a good first impression.

Confusing terminology and poor organization, though, can cause us to go from hopeful and interested to frustrated very quickly, so it’s vitally important that we’re able to find our way around quickly.

We often get oriented by glancing around a page to see what options exist and quickly filtering out things that don’t apply. For example, when looking for information about a company, we look for the words About, Company, Us, and similar terms. When we see terms that don’t fit what ...

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