- From my perspective, this is one of the most important issues of usability. We can speculate all we want about making things self evident or salient in order to approximate the viewing habits of the general populace. But ultimately I think people are willing to put up with having to think a little about the information presented as long as they can find it. If they can't find what they are looking for, viewers will never have the chance to not think about that page at all.
- I'm not sure I'm completely convinced in a neat separation between link and search dominant users. This type of action seems more determinant on the given task, or what the user is looking for. For myself, I browse when I am looking for information (calendar dates the library will be open, or the list of movies that will be released by Netflix next month, scrolling social media etc), but I search if I am looking for a specific product (movies on netflix, an item on amazon, books on audible etc.).
- Also, if you use google to search for pages beforehand, are you automatically always a search dominant user? Or is that link browsing?
- I like the idea that changed color links after clicking give us a sense of scale in terms of a search. This convention is especially helpful when looking for a very specific piece of information that requires scanning through several web pages.
- Navigation isn't just a feature of a web site, it is the web site. This is an interesting and pervasive idea in our current culture. The "there-ness" of the completely nonexistent world of the internet. So the hierarchy of navigation that we are talking about here can't just be self-evident, but also feel natural, the way it feels to go from one place to another, the sense of connection between the two.
- This may be somewhat unrelated, but one of the most frustrating conventions I have found is the placement of supplementary material, or glossing in a text. There is nothing more distracting than to have to open to the back of a book and have to page through a series of dense notes to find the specific one that will provide necessary definition or historical background. Glossing on the bottom of the page has always seemed the best option. No unnecessary navigation, the hierarchy is clear (main text above, supplementary below) and helps maintain the steady flow of the reading experience.
- Perhaps there is a lesson there, if a complex web of navigational locations is unnecessary, perhaps they can be done without. Again I will refer to the website of the band the Oh Hellos. This site is a demonstration of something that I have seen become popular on various sites. To make the majority, if not the entirety of the site a single scrolling page, with defined separations in the information signaled by background color changes. The navigation links at the top simply scroll the page for the user down to the appropriate information. Allowing for browsing that can take the whole site in at once, with links to shortcut that experience. But no separate pages or hierarchies that might hide information, its laid out simply so that the user doesn't miss anything vital. But also scannable with the links.
- From here on in I will be using the University of Minnesota Duluth Website to examine the Krug's ideas here.
- Off the bat, the page suffers from a persistent nuisance that I find on most webpages, that being an inconsistency in the persistent navigational tools.
- From the home page there is a top banner with (curiously) two vertical columns of links. Of these, "About UMD", "Events", and "News" all have seemingly separate sites attached to them, with separate navigational options, and lacks the persistant navigation that follows on the other pages. (Compare this to the "Alumni", "Sports" or "News" options on the BSU p-nav).
- I have often found when searching that the inclusion of these links, or their inconsistency is somewhat bewildering at first, and gives the user a sense of "losing their place", or having dropped off the site entirely.
- Usually this also means the user will have to hit the back key on the browser window, or try to find a link to the home page (on the UMD pages its the UMD logo). While a small annoyance, this type of change in scenery most likely will result in this page being backpedalled from more frequently than others, the lack of p-nav making it seem less inviting.
- Another feature that I always appreciate is when the p-nav follows as the user scrolls down the page, so the user does not have to unnecissarily scroll all the way back up just to reach the navigation. This might also be considered a distraction, but it is a change in convention that doesn't require any learning curve, and only stands to attempt to be more convenient. The UMD p-nav banner is too thick for this to be plausible. Evidently it was important to fit the logo on the banner as well, instead of placing it in the corner as part of the page frame, as Krug suggests.
- Notably, the primary navigation tools do not have any secondary options when hovered over. The user must take it at blind faith that what they are looking for under a certain heading. Perhaps I should rethink my gripe from last week about how the BSU has too many secondary navigation options.
- The UMD site has a relatively conservative top banner for the sign in/search utilities area.
- In this area is an unconventional link to something called One Stop. When clicked, this actually leads to a separate site that more resembles the genre of University pages, and fulfills more of the expectations Krug is laying out here. There is a horizontal primary navigation bar with a large selection of secondary drop down options. The logo is in the top left corner here, the search in the right, with a simple calendar and events information, very much akin to the MyBSU homepage.
- This becomes an interesting question, which one is really the "main" website for the university. When googled, the first site is the first suggestion, and seems to be the University's front page. But the One Stop site seems the more helpful, and better laid out.
- I understand Krug's point about the simplicity of the search box utility, then again I can't recall a time when this experience was all that complex, aside from sites where reduction of hits is necessary (Amazon, Google, etc), which Krug admits on page 72.
- On second thought, the search at Ebscohost does strike me as an example of an overly complicated search tool. The first time I came across this search, which takes up the entire page with its plethora of advanced options (What is a Smarttext search? That sounds like something the engine should be doing already if I'm perusing academic materials!), with unnecesarry instructions to "enter any words..."
- Heirarchical page structures are hard to see in university pages, they often only go a few levels down, with many links that guide the user to forms, or related pages, rather than further down the heirarchy. Again, when clicking around the UMD site, every one of the primary links has a very different host of secondary links, each of which might provide some tertiary pages, but might also link to separate sites altogether. There seem to be separate sites for the sports, academic departments, faculty departments, and course listings, although there may be some overlap or interconnectivity in there. Often there will be sidebars of "Related Links" making it hard to tell where you might be in the hierarchy.
- When searching on UMD, one doesn't always have a sense of where you are, due to the every changing page schemes and lack of entirely persistent navigation. You feel more like you are jumping from one place to a wholly different place, then delving deeper into a single place. Something the BSU site does a little bit better.
- On a somewhat related note, this is a feature I have always admired about Library storage tool in Windows. I often like embed files in related files in a sort of hierarchy, one that the Windows Library will map out: Library>Documents>Schoolwork>2015-16>Spring 2016>The English Language>Papers>Old English Paper. And each of these act as links that will bring the user back to that particular point in the hierarchy.
- Otherwise what Krug refers to as breadcrumbs.
- A convention that is often missing from university sites.
- To change things up, I am using a random website generator to replicate Krug's sense of being "dumped" somewhere in the internet, and examining the site using his Trunk Test.
