Designing Web Navigation

Preface

In 1998, the dot-com boom was in full swing, bringing with it an extreme amount of activity in web development. In that same year we saw the appearance of Jennifer Fleming's Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience, the predecessor to this book. With certainty and clarity, she demonstrated techniques for creating successful web navigation that focused on users. This was a sober and welcome contrast to the hype of the time, and it influenced my own thinking.

Much has changed since 1998. Using the Web has become commonplace. Reading news, hunting for a job, shopping for gifts, looking up telephone numbers, ordering pizza, planning trips, and selling items are just some of the activities that many people do solely on the Web. The notion of Web 2.0 marks a second phase of the Web, characterized by user-generated content, collaboration, communities, and broader participation in general. And new technologies, such as Ajax and Flex, point to a more interactive Web with highly functional applications.

Amidst all this change, the problems of creating good web navigation systems remain. In many respects, they get even more complicated. Business objectives increasingly rely on the assumption that people will be able to find, access, and use the information and services they provide. In order for web sites to be successful, people must be able to navigate effectively. A "cool" site with lots of interactivity and user participation will still be lousy if the navigation doesn't work.

Designing Web Navigation offers a fresh look at a fundamental topic of web site development: navigation design. In its pages, you'll find insight and practical advice for approaching a range of navigation design problems. Though inspired by Fleming's Web Navigation, this book explores topics not found in the original, and it has been completely rewritten.

SCOPE OF THIS BOOK

Web navigation design touches most other aspects of web site development in some way. Defining where it begins and ends is difficult. This book situates navigation design in a broader context of site development, at times overlapping with other disciplines and concerns. But, as much as possible, the focus throughout remains clearly on creating an effective navigation system.

My intent is to provide you with some of the primary tools of navigation design and ways to solve navigation problems. Relevant theory and related material are discussed and credited where appropriate. Each chapter ends with suggested reading and a set of questions. The questions are not meant to quiz you on the chapter contents, but to offer some exercises and help you experience concepts in action. They may also require you to do some investigative research on your own. Use them as a springboard to further exploration of related topics.

The focus of this book is on creating navigation systems for large, information-rich sites serving a business purpose. At times, it also assumes you are working in a large project team with diverse roles. Don't be daunted, however; the principles and techniques in the book can apply to small sites with small teams, too. Navigation design is ultimately about the thought processes and steps in designing navigation in general, regardless of the site type, size of the team, and your overall objectives in creating a site.

Note also that I use the term design in its broadest sense, referring to all of the activities involved in designing web navigation, not just the graphic or visual aspects of it. Further, the use of designer or navigation designer doesn't necessarily mean that there is a single person with that job title who creates a web navigation system from beginning to end. Most often, the decisions made in creating a navigation system cross roles and teams over the entire lifespan of a project. The designer, then, refers to the person or group of people who make decisions about a particular aspect of the navigation at a given point in a project.

Web navigation design is a craft. You must employ creative problem-solving skills to arrive at a practical solution by considering and examining different possibilities. Intuition plays as much a role as skill, experience, and science. Rarely is there a single, optimal solution. As with any design practice, navigation design is about balance, trade-offs, and exploring alternatives. For this reason, you won't find all the answers in this book. Instead, I offer a systematic approach to the problems of navigation design. Navigation design is really about asking the right questions at the right time.

With that in mind, you should also be aware of what this book is not about:

This book is not about rules

The recommendations made in this book are not to be taken as absolute truths.

This book is not about search

Though related to web navigation, this book doesn't cover the issues of search systems. Chapter 11 offers some insight into how search and browse mechanisms can be integrated, but even there, the focus is on navigation.

This book is not about programming or implementation

There are no examples of code or how to implement a navigation system; instead, I focus on the conception and definition of navigation systems.