using
metaphors
this will help you refine your vision of the site’s
structure. Keep in mind than no metaphor is perfect
and this exercise can be quite time consuming. It
may also lead to interesting discussions but rather
off topic. But it can be very helpful and even fun!
Some of the metaphors widely used:
- Organizational
metaphors – following
the structure of a company or a system. If you
are selling products, this could represent the
way they are grouped together.
- Functional metaphors
– relate tasks you can do on the site
with tasks you can do in another environment.
“cut”, “copy” and “paste”
is used without real-life scissors or glue.
- Visual metaphor
– based on common graphic elements familiar
to people. Designing music site that allows
users to play music could take advantage of
the universal “play”. “stop”
and “pause” icons found on CD players.
Metaphor collection suggestions:
- gather your people and brainstorm ideas
- don’t limit anyone, encourage every
angle (initially)
- map out major sections of the site by connecting
elements from the content inventory to each
metaphor
Sorry, fun’s over. Time to decide. Now
you must choose a rationale for the site’s
structure. The whole site might not be explainable
as a metaphor but maybe a portion of it (navigation
system, etc).
Document all major sections, and organization
of their subsections.
define navigation
How will users use the site? How will they get
from one place to another? You don’t want
anyone getting lost in the maze of your site you
spend so much effort building.
Start from your site structure – the major
sections are most likely going to form the global
navigation system that appear on every page of
the site. We should try to limit the number of
global navigation elements to between five and
seven. Your logo should serve as a link back to
homepage.
forms of navigation
adapted from
Navigation Complex by Peter-Paul Koch
main types:
- Linear navigation
typically contains Previous, Next, and Index
links and nothing more. Since it’s contrary
to the spirit of the Web, it is rarely used.
This is a one-dimensional navigation system,
used mostly for online books, presentations,
or other linear documents.
- Hierarchical
navigation is by far the most
common type. The pages are grouped into a hierarchy
of subjects, and the navigation is usually presented
with a foldout DHTML application. This is a
two-dimensional navigation system.
- Web navigation
is a rare type where a page contains
links to related pages, without any obvious
grouping of these links. You could equally call
it a multi-dimensional or a non-dimensional
navigation system.
subtypes as special instances of the three
main types:
- Breadcrumb
navigation is a linear path
through a (usually) hierarchical site structure.
- A Sitemap
is a completely unfolded hierarchical navigational
system.
- Text navigation
consists of hyperlinks in the text of the page.
There is no obvious logic to the links themselves,
except that they lead to information that’s
related to the text in the page.
The goal of any navigational system is to offer
the user a clear and simple way to access all
pages in a site. Therefore, it
reflects the site structure, and when the structure
is complex, the navigation is also complex.
What is the best form? It depends on your users
– the best way to go is to have a combination
of innovative and obvious to suit the needs and
skills of all your users. Getting lost in the
maze of your site will only result in EXIT.
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