Principles of Web Navigation: Advanced Design Techniques

Navigation plays a major role in shaping our experiences on the web. It provides context for understanding information, reflects brand, and affects the credibility of a site. And ultimately, the ability to navigate to information can have a large impact on your site's bottom line.

But make no mistake: navigation design is problematic. It remains one of the thorniest parts of creating a site, despite the possibilities recent technologies now offer. What's more, web navigation design is a multidisciplinary endeavor. The decisions taken in creating a navigation system span roles and teams, and they also change through the lifecycle of a project.

Navigation design, then, is not merely limited to choosing a row of buttons. It's much broader and at the same time more subtle than that. As with other aspects of web design, navigation design is a craft in which intuition plays as much as a role as skill, experience, and science. It's also requires explicit reasoning to ensure broad agreement.

The Benefits

In this recorded webinar, James Kalbach shows you how to leverage principles in web navigation to deepen the quality of your site design. He focuses on three of the most advanced and misunderstood aspects of web navigation. For each, James provides an overview and take-aways that you can apply in your daily work.

• Transitional Volatility: The amount that web navigation changes across a site has a name—transitional volatility—coined by David Danielson, a researcher at Stanford University. Based on this principle, you'll see how controlled changes to the page layout, among other things, can improve orientation.
• Scent of Information: Jared Spool and his colleagues popularized the notion of the scent of information. It refers to how well links match a visitor's information need. Beyond learning the elements of good labeling, you'll find out how to better reach your ultimate business goals—by creating labels that persuade.
• Berrypicking: Over 20 years ago professor Marcia Bates observed that when seeking information online, people change their strategies rapidly. She likened this behavior to berrypicking. Practically speaking, web navigation needs to support an evolving search. In particular, you'll learn about specific ways to integrate browsing and searching options into a cohesive user experience.

Our recorded webinars are edited for your listening pleasure, and include questions from attendees (as restated by our moderator). The running time is one hour.

James Kalbach is the author of Designing Web Navigation (O'Reilly, August 2007), the bestselling book which offers a fresh look at the fundamental topic of web site navigation design. By day, James is a user experience designer with LexisNexis, where he develops interfaces for web-based search applications. He previously served as head of information architecture with Razorfish, Germany, and is an assistant editor with Boxes and Arrows, a leading online journal for user experience information. James holds a degree in library and information science from Rutgers University, as well as a Master's degree in music theory and composition.