navigation plays a part in Web that answers the question "who am I?", "where do I come from?" where am I going?. Good navigation is the main building block of a website. When designing a website or correcting a web page, it is often the first challenge for the designer.
Information architecture of
01 navigation design
information architecture determines the quality of navigation, and the information architecture of the content is clearly arranged before the design, so as to maximize the function of navigation, sort out the website structure and effectively transmit information. How many layers of relationships are there in the web structure? Is there a relationship between the upper and lower layers? Is the relationship between the labels of each category tied or related? Is there a combination of items in each sub class, and so on?. Avoid simply subdividing the page navigation to level 3 or even 4 in terms of simple logical relationships and even business relationships, or producing some categories of information that do not correspond to user perceptions. Each additional navigation will increase a cognitive dimension, every level increase the navigation system complexity increases several times, not only the user’s operation will increase exponentially, "to the maintenance cost greatly. Following two icons, you can clearly see the different placement of the same number of pages, giving users a different experience.
has a "3 clicks" principle in Web interactive design, where users can’t find the desired information after 3 clicks or finish a function, and then they choose to give up. So for navigation, the basic thing should be to let the user know what the current page is, and know where your destination is. The difference between breadth and depth of navigation is demonstrated. Generally speaking, breadth is better than depth. Choosing between the layers of the deep structure is easier to lose direction and may even get lost. But not in the breadth was too broad, no time to put too much show content could scare users, so that they were forced to suffer from "choice syndrome".
in order to better understand the user’s cognitive, or even in the face of the designer and other needs of the revision, help navigation creation and improvement, one of the most commonly used method is card sorting. The card sorting method is simple. First, prepare some blank cards of the same size, write the information on different cards, let the participants classify themselves, and also give proper explanatory guidance. The number of people in each test is between 2 and 4. If the number of people is too small, there is no discussion between users, and too many people will make the discussion confusing and the situation difficult to control. This is a test method commonly used in Web sites or other early stages of planning, to understand the information classification that really conforms to the user’s habits, and to find the cognitive differences between them, as the basis for adjusting the architecture.
Interactive style of
02 navigation design
Web navigation is the most important