Looking for navigation?

I have seen lot of websites, portals & enterprise applications in the past years; with different kinds of navigations & the way those have been placed in the design.

I have seen a few things common in most of them. This is not something new I am telling; which is already been stated several times on various forums & knowledge-based sites, but this is what I have experienced while designing information architecture & wire-frame designs for several clients.

This is a generalization, though recommended for the ease of use to the end-user; which is most important goal of an Information Architect. Below given are 2 observations for the same:



The user behavior is generally intended to find a site navigation, by starting on the top left & then using the menus places on horizontal right or vertical left (downwards).



Also, most of these sites had the search functionality, placed on the top-right corner of the web-page. Even the research has proved this technically.

Due to conventions that gets followed by the several existing sites, such things become 'kinda' thumb-rule when it comes to designing usable websites, even though it is not mandatory for anybody. I will try to put in more information on the same in the next part of this.

Do you differ with these ones or have some more serious thoughts? Please do provide your valuable comments here.

Navigation Design (Part 2)

Navigation design guidelines (continued...)

1. Keep the navigational elements consistent across the website: Make sure that all the links & navigational elements are kept consistently on the same place as there have been anywhere else, in terms of links, styles, etc. User can find them easily anywhere in the site.
   
   
2. Design it to ‘load fast’: Do all your design & development by considering a user having low-speed internet connections. Make sure that your all your site HTML, CSS, Flash components (if any) loads faster, so that users do not get bothered by the in-essential time it takes to load the whole stuff.
   
   
3. Quality as against to Quantity: Internet users like minimum options & clicks to get the desired information. CREATE sub-sections & sub-categories to help the user to “navigate easily & locate the required content easily & quickly”.
   
   
4. Browser-Compatibility: There is multi-browser application environment. Do compatibility tests for your website before it goes live on major browsers like “MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, and Opera” & check if the look & feel as well functionality of JavaScript used in the site is working well.
   
   
5. No un-essential stuff in the navigation: Non-core Information like “Privacy Policy, Terms of use, even Contact Us (in most cases)” should not bein the main navigation & can be placed in the “bottom menus” zone.

Navigation Design (Part 1)

Navigation plays a 'core' role' in case of any kind of product development, whether a corporate website, a portal or an intra-net application that's designed to cater internal as well as external users based on certain security policies.

These guidelines are basically for those sites who wants to deliver a "usable" interface, unlike graphics & animation rich websites who are visually appealing but sometimes lacks ease of use, due to unclear navigation systems.

Following are the few points which serve as a generic guideline while designing a navigation.

1. Navigation Placement: Make sure that the navigation is placed at an easily visible location, so that the users don’t have to“guess” or “search” for it.
   
   
2. Place important things on high: Keep the important things on the top area of the page, preferably in the first half of the page. Such significant information should get displayed first to the user.
   
   
3. Banner Blindness: Make sure that you don’t put any content above the ad. Banners as users are tend to ignore all the content that’s displayed above ad banners. Make sure especially that navigation is not placed above such banners, as ‘navigation’ is very important & should not be ‘lost’.
   
   
4. Avoid being unconventional: Designing website navigation in an ‘unconventional’ way to make the site stand out from the crowd is NOT a good method of navigation design. It becomes difficult for the users who are now quite used to the general web design practices of designs, navigations & such other generic functionalities.
   
   
5. Home link should always be there: Homepage being core of any website, a back-link to the homepage should always be there. Also, it is very much possible that user might have landed up on your website through some search engine or have come directly to your sub-page / inner page, a “home“ link always helps them to come back to the homepage of your website.
   

What's User-Centered Design?

"User Centered Design" (UCD) is an approach used in the project, where the end-user or target audience is at the center of the design & development of an application or product development.

This approach makes sure that all the design & development is done based on the end-user inputs, their requirement & feedbacks taken into account while researching, using either of the popular user-centered design methods ; to make sure that the application-in-the-make meets all or maximum possible expectations of the end-user from the respective product / application intended at the specific target user group.

ISO 13407:1999 - a section for Human-centered design processes for interactive systems, specifies the steps for an ideal UCD process which actually begins at the very early stage of the project / product design & development. This stages are inter-dependent & their usage in the actual practice varies based on the project it applies to, as well as the amount of efforts that has been put in.

These steps can be briefed as follows:

• Understand and specify the context of use
  
  
• Specify the user and organizational requirements
  
  
• Produce product design / solutions
  
  
• Evaluate designs against requirements

This also can be explained with the help of below-given graphics:



If this product design meets the user requirements, this leads to the final product development.

We will discuss more about the "User-centered design" in the part 2 of this article.

Usability! What's this? (Part -2)

Nowadays, there are various product / applications in the market which makes the market competitive in various terms, including "usability" of the product. This ever-increasing competitiveness makes markets saturated & the need for best-of-the-breed products in terms of usability are required to developed.

These products needs to be more of "user-centered" than being "technology-oriented". An 'Usability' expert analyzes the interaction between the end user and the application or product developed. After carefully observing them, an "Usability expert" may find the functional or design flaws in the process by which the product or application is developed. Being an Usability person, one has to always keep in mind that the product has been designed / developed by keeping the end user in mind.

Also, 'usability testing' and 'usability engineering' are both different things. "Usability Testing" measures the ease of use of a given software / application or product. But, "Usability Engineering (UE)" is a scientific way of research & develop the processes which ensures the product / application developed is compliant to most usability parameters.

In the coming article, I will post some more stuff on "Usability".