Tree Testing – A quick way to evaluate your Information Architecture
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Tag Archives: navigation
Paper prototyping iPhone apps
Found link via youtube:
The process feels a little disjointed and could be smoother, but this is a common problem with paper prototyping and on the whole I think it’s a nice idea.
One concern I do have however, is how long the paper templates took to create. Surely you could put something together Axure or similar in a shorter time, and which would be more reusable than these pieces of paper…?
Great article on pagination styles
Great article on pagination styles -> Easy as 1,2,3? http://is.gd/F4cy (from goodusability.co.uk)
Tabbed Navigation, and What Makes it Useful
Tabbed Navigation, and What Makes it Useful -> http://is.gd/F3NI (from uxbooth.com)
Quince: UI Design Patterns
Now bare with me on this – I found a blog site which contains a review of a really useful site containing UX libraries, which is doubly noteworthy because it presents the patterns in a very usable and very lovely UI.
So, my dilemma is do I post a link to the review or direct to the site with the patterns?
I’ll start by posting a link to the blog site I found the link on, as the blog owner, Patrick Neeman does a really nice job of explaining the patterns site’s features:
Patrick Neeman’s blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com/2009/02/03/cool-website-tuesdays-infragistics-quince/
And Patrick’s comment:
I can never say Infragistics right, but they produce top notch controls for the ASP.NET world. Now they have something else that is way cool: Quince, a great little directory of user interface patterns that is built using SilverLight. J. Ambrose Little, a User Experience guy over there, wrote an extensive blog post about the new tool.
You can navigate through different patterns four different ways (I find user tasks especially useful), search them via keyword, and see sort through them by letter. Very, very easy to use.
The best part? If you have a design pattern you want to submit, you can do it through the site, and the Infragistics team will review it and post it. It’s got all the requisite social networking tools with it!
And here’s a couple of screenshots of the Quince site:
Quince patterns explorer - View by wireframe location
Quince patterns explorer - Pattern detail
Followed by the all important link: http://quince.infragistics.com/
Enjoy!
User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing
Over the last couple of years a technique known as faceted browsing has become something of a standard on e-commerce sites.
Faceted browsing allows users to filter data (typically product data) by groups of words that describe them (e.g.: colour, size, style, manufacturer’s name).
Amazon.com were one of the early proponents of faceted browsing and it is now such a common element of any large shopping site that it is more noticeable by its absence than by its inclusion.
This article by Mike Padilla over on Digital Web Magazine gives a clear and concise breakdown of the technique, and offers some great advice on planning faceted browsing for your a site, highlighting best practice and potential pitfalls.
Original article: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/user_interface_implementations_of_faceted_browsing/
Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attribute filters in any order.
…
If we define groups of adjectives (facets) that describe objects and allow users to filter with them, we could empower users to manipulate the information space themselves rather than oppressively imposing a fixed structure upon them. Users could flexibly select values across all facets, in any order, to view only those objects that could be described as such.
Selected screen-shots from the article
Placing an item count after each facet value effectively gives users future insight without requiring additional interaction
Original article: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/user_interface_implementations_of_faceted_browsing/
120 Excellent Examples of CSS Horizontal Menu
This is a really useful list of (for the most part) nicely designed, horizontal primary navigation menus (give or take a couple of typos).
Original article from csstea.com here: http://bit.ly/O9Xf
Menu is an important element of website. Menu has to be user-friendly and match the design in order to facilitate navigation. In this list you will find 120 excellent examples of css horizantal menu.
120 Excellent Examples of CSS Horizontal Menu
Primary navigation at the bottom?
I stumbled across this website earlier today and really liked their primary navigation:
http://www.designcommission.com/
Design Commission (DC) are a digital communications company based in Seattle, USA, and as such, you’d expect their site to be something of a showcase for their design and technical skills.
The site has a clean, crisp look and feel with intelligent use of white-space, but what i really like is the primary navigation links at the bottom of the screen.
www.designcommission.com
Its bright and bold (so not easily missed) and has a fixed location so you always know where its going to be.
Some neat z-indexing, coupled with a subtle shadow effect gives the impression that the navigation bar hovers over the content, and the addition of a simple cut-away triangle to denote your current location is a great touch, which compliments the element’s ‘hover’ appearance.
Simple triangular cut-away
Summary
By moving this navigation to the bottom of the screen DC have given more prominence to the page content, ensuring you see more information above the fold, while it’s fixed location and highly visible design means you never loose it…
Its a brave move and rejects the convention of having primary navigation either at the top of the page or down the left-hand side, but thanks to the way in which DC have implemented it I think it works really well.