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analyticalQ book review - by Anne Ku
Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
by Jennifer Fleming
Copyright © 1998, paperback 255 pages, O'Reilly & Associates
ISBN1-56592-351-0
9 September 2000
Navigation is essential but often overlooked and most certainly, in my experience, not thought of as something separate from the content. The author is a user experience consultant - which I take to mean - design for the user. I'd like to interpret this as - let the user be the designer.
This is really a reference book and comes with a CD. Among the many reading recommendations are some classics:
- Donal Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Doubleday 1990
- Albers Joseph, The Interaction of Color, 1963
Grice's Maxim's on polite conversation also applies to content management:
- Quality: saying true things (reliability, accuracy?)
- Quantity: saying neither too much nor too little (information overload!)
- Relevance: saying things that relate to the topic at hand
- Clarity: saying things clearly and well.
The basic navigation needs includes answers to these first tier questions:
- Where am I?
- Where can I go
- How will I get there?
- How can I get back to where I once was?
Second tier are the purpose-oriented questions (depending on the type of site: identity, learning, information, entertainment, etc.)
Third tier relates to the topic or audience-oriented questions.
Lots of good links in the back.
The trend is having updates on a companion web site. In this case, it's at http://www.squarecircle.com/navigation.