Information Architecture 2: Navigation Design
- Atlanta: Friday, February 26
- New York: Friday, March 26
- Chicago: Saturday, April 24
- London: Tuesday, May 18
Jen Cardello
Kathryn Whitenton
Full-Day Tutorial
Defining a Web-based navigation system can often devolve into an opinionated game of office politics or a mad
grab at the technology of the week. To ensure quality, your navigation design should be driven by a user-centered
design methodology.
The best starting point for defining an effective, efficient, and extensible navigation system is to understand
human behavior, the scope of navigation components and styles, your business needs, and your users’
mission-critical tasks.
In this seminar, we’ll explore navigation components and menu styles and give you the tools you need to
make informed navigation design decisions.
What You’ll Learn
In this session, you’ll learn:
- How to evaluate your existing navigation system’s effectiveness (and how to make the business case for change)
- Which navigation components suit different website purposes, task scenarios, and content types/structure
- The pros and cons of different menu styles
- How users employ both search and navigation to complete tasks
- What you should (and should not) do to ensure user success and situational awareness
Course Outline
- Purpose of navigation
- Principles of a navigation system
- User behavior: Where do people look on Web pages?
- Most significant navigation issues we see in testing
- Top 10 attributes of effective navigation systems
- Defining navigation system components:
- Global
- Local
- Breadcrumbs
- Utility
- Related links
- Social filters
- Shortcuts/quick links
- Site map/index/guide
- Process/linear
- Pagination
- Tag cloud
- Facets
- Defining navigation system display styles
- Tabs
- Vertical links
- Filmstrip
- Accordion
- Fisheye
- Defining navigation system interaction styles
- Standard hyperlinking
- Landing pages
- Sub-navigation bars
- Drop-down and “mega” drop-down menus
- Fly-out and “mega” fly-out menus
- Cascading menus
- Usefulness, issues and recommendations for various navigation components, display, and interaction styles
- Search and navigation
- How much navigation do users need?
- Tools for defining navigation systems
- Task analysis
- Competitive analysis
- Component inventory
- Task flow
- Navigation mapping
- Documentation: Description, wireframes, and schematics
Format
This full-day tutorial includes lecture, screenshots, user testing videos, and active participation.
Handouts
Copies of all the presentation slides
Who Should Attend
The course assumes little to no knowledge of IA and is appropriate for anyone responsible for their organization's website, including managers, content contributors, and designers.
See Also:
See our companion course, Information Architecture 1: Structuring and Organizing Web-Based Information.
Instructors
Jen Cardello is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Since 1996, Cardello has
specialized in user-centered and business-focused website strategy, expert reviews, competitive analysis, and
information architecture. She previously led customer experience consulting practices at Gomez Advisors, Watchfire,
and Keynote Systems, advising clients in sectors such as financial services, telecommunications, and lodging.
During this time, she also developed hundreds of user experience criteria for the Keynote Scorecards that benchmark
dozens of financial services websites including banks, brokerages, lenders, and insurance carriers. As principal
of her private practice, Cardello worked with clients in transportation, financial services, publishing, and
education to define user and usage-centered Web strategies and architectures. She has a BFA in architecture
from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Presenting in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, and London.
Kathryn Whitenton is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Prior to joining NN/g,
Whitenton worked as a Usability Engineer with the University of Washington Libraries, where she led user research
and usability testing for the Libraries’ website. She also worked as a psychology researcher at the University
of Texas at Austin, where she managed a clinical research study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Whitenton
holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Washington, and a B.A. in Psychology
and Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin.
Presenting in Chicago.
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