New navigation and usability ideas.

Posted on July 27, 2000

in IA/Usability

by peter van dijck (pedrito)

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peter van dijck

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User since: October 22, 1999

Last login: August 30, 2005

Articles written: 23

There is a lot being done to solve common navigation / usability problems. I had a look around the web, here are a few of the more interesting ideas I've found.

Search Engines

http://www.decursor.com/Zoeken/ - In the advanced search on this site (in Dutch), there is a dropdown with most often used search terms. Any programmer will ask you why that's necessary, but I believe it's a brilliant idea, the genius of it lays in its simplicity. It takes the pain out of searching.

It shows you what people are searching for, and gives you the feeling you will get good results from this. It makes the search easier. Most importantly: you don't have to figure out which search terms to use. I am thinking about putting it right next to the search field on my site on every page.

I think it is the most useful addition to the plain text box you can make in a search function (apart from search certain sections of the site, which on some sites is pretty useful).

Personalisation

http://invisibleweb.com - Easy to use personalization. It's yahoo-like but easier. I especially like the up/down arrows, which are really (and let me use an often abused word here) intuitive. My.yahoo.com is the granddaddy of personalisation, and it's pretty good, but this site is fantastic in its simplicity.

Some sites let you keep your own 'bookmarks'. One site (lost the url) has a button 'add this page to my list' and there is a list of pages in the top right corner. This seems to work well for sites you would be doing research on. It is more or less the print basket functionality I talked about earlier.

Navigation

http://www.ft.com - A big problem with navigation on complex sites is: how much do you show. Show too little, and it will be harder for users to navigate (I am talking about compelx sites here). Show too much, and you?re taking up too much screenspace.

FT solved this by not showing any navigation, only a 'view navigation' button and a search button. It doesn't reload te page when you click the view navigation button, just shows the navigation, so it's pretty useful. A great idea.

Peter Van Dijck is an Information Architect with an interest in localization, accessibility, content management systems and metadata.

poorbuthappy.com/ease Weblog

petervandijck.net Portfolio

Easytopicmaps.com

liga1.com Accessibility and localization

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Submitted by pedrito on July 30, 2000 - 08:26.

Another idea that is usable and cool: http://www.camworld.com/ has in its top right corner color schemes you can choose from. Beautiful in its simlicity. I think the problem with many functionalities like this is that the programmers go crazy and make it too powerful (well, too complex. Power without the complexity would be great).

Submitted by wordsilk on July 31, 2000 - 14:30.

What is the point of changing the background colors? (camworld.com) Seems rather pointless. Now if this would increase the font size ...

Submitted by fleener on July 31, 2000 - 16:37.

The pull-down menu of common search terms is a nice idea, but pull-down menus are the bane of usability. Read this article, "A flying menu attack can wound your navigation." A better solution would be to present the commonly conducted searches as links. What could be simpler than clicking a link to execute a predefined search?

Submitted by aardvark on July 31, 2000 - 19:58.

On the personalization front, I don't consider the 'collapsible' boxes on the left to be personalization (but I don't think you do, either). Instead, I take issue with the arrows. The designer tried very hard to make them look like OS widgets, part of the browser or operating system, instead of matching the style of the site (tabs, colors, etc.). Given that, it implies to the user that it's part of the system and will minimize/maximize immediately. The page reload that ensues is instead disconcerting at best when you have a different expectation. The ft.com hidden navigation menu isn't very interesting to me. Not only does it crash my non-4.x browsers, it took me a moment to find the option to view the menu. When I first hit a site, I look for the navigation immediately to determine the site structure. Dragging my mouse around while I scan for some way to use the site (outside of a search option) is not what I call usable. Finally, the color scheme changing idea at Camworld, while quaint, is ultimately useless. It does nothing to enhance the experience, other than give it a color to match your mood. Now, if it changed font sizes, font colors, or anything else to account for bad monitors or eyeballs, then it would be interesting. And just what does 'fonts on' and 'fonts off' do? Other than fail to graphically display which is selected. Something I think is ultimately more usable (I'm biased - I'm the author), Give the User Control Over Your Fonts, at least addresses a need some of my users had. It's good to see people trying to address some of these problems, and push the envelope a bit, but ultimately I think they are making the same usability mistakes that we've been making for the last 5 years.

Submitted by pedrito on August 1, 2000 - 12:32.

Useless it is (the color changer), but also usable. I agree the ft hidden navigation doesn't work, but I figure it's because they haven't gotten the details right, not because it's a bad idea as such. Maybe the idea works better on smaller sites with a lot of not easily categorisable content.... ah, those questions.... As for the personalisation, maybe I'm abusing the term but I did see the collapsible menus as just that. It lets you layout your own page. I know the UI OS argument, but I'm not decided on it yet. In this case I liked it. And for your font control article Adrian: fantastic! Hadn't seen that, thanks.

Submitted by fotl on August 3, 2000 - 11:09.

I don't think the article Fleener points to concludes dropdowns are the "bane of usability," just that they pose challenging usability issues. "use a drop-down only when you'd be happy for users to accept its default state" Certain situations require an interface control that saves valuable screen real estate, has more choices than are appropriate for radios, and constrains input to a preselected list. I find Windows dropdowns to be a poor implementation of the Macs popups (more clicks and poor acquisition with Windows, ), but they can both be used successfully. But it all comes down to listening to your users and testing it with them.

lame personalization

Submitted by ericd on January 18, 2001 - 18:35.

re: Presonalisation Even though this is a simple effort by camworld in customization, not personalization, it is a "useful" feature still in the larger picture of experience design. I am a strong proponent of usability and i preach it every time i can, but I do so as a reaction to the lack of it around me, not because I think it is all you need for a great experience. The other half of a great experience beyond usability in my opinion is a strong brand or unique style. In the case of camworld, the execution is weak, but i dont remember being able to do the same on any other site. ericD

Popup for search is a great idea

Submitted by mcombs on March 8, 2002 - 11:21.

I really like the popup menu for search terms. Since I can't read Dutch, it wasn't clear to me how the terms in that box are selected. I think the most helpful mechanism would be a list of the most popular searches *that were successful*. It'd be no fun to select a term and have nothing come up. The inital list of terms could be seeded at configuration time and perhaps could keep a 7 or 14 day history for popularity so it could change over time as old file searches disappear and new things take their place.

Screen real-estate and other design consideration would dictate whether this was implemented as a popup menu or a list of links.

Bookmark basket

Submitted by mcombs on March 8, 2002 - 11:32.

Amazon has something similar to this, at least in terms of functionality. "Items you've recently viewed" and "The page you made" allow rapid access to prior stops.

A site-localized set of bookmarks would be even more interesting if it were retained from visit to visit.

I hope you can find the URL to the site which implemented this. We're struggling to design similar functionality (though, with only one bookmark) and unable to come up with a good pair of icons.

I couldn't find the Show Navigation button

Submitted by mcombs on March 8, 2002 - 11:36.

Is it still there?

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