Section 3.1. STAYING FOUND

3.1. STAYING FOUND

Let's say you've built a large web site or application that you've had to break up into sections, subsections, specialized tools, pages, windows, and wizards. How do you help users navigate?

Signposts are features that help users figure out their immediate surroundings. Common signposts include page and window titles, web page logos and other branding devices, tabs, and selection indicators. Patterns such as Global Navigation, Color-Coded Sections, Sequence Map, Breadcrumbs, and Annotated Scrollbarall described in this chaptertell a user where they currently are, and often, where they can go with only one more jump. They help a user stay "found" and plan his next steps.

Wayfinding is what people do as they find their way towards their goal. The term is pretty self-explanatory. But how people actually do it is quite a research subjectspecialists from cognitive science, environmental design, and web site design have studied it. These common-sense features help users with wayfinding:

Good signage

Clear, unambiguous labels anticipate what you're looking for and tell you where to go; signs are where you expect them to be, and you're never left standing at a decision point without guidance. You can check this by walking through the artifact you're designing and following the paths of all the major use cases. At each point where a user must decide where to go next, make sure it's signed or labeled appropriately.

Environmental clues

You'd look for restrooms in the back of a restaurant, for instance, or a gate where a walkway intersects a fence. Likewise, you'd look for a Cancel button at the bottom or right of a dialog box, and logos in the upper-left corner of a web page. Keep in mind that these clues often are culturally determined, and someone new to the culture (e.g., someone who's never used a given operating system before) will not be aware of them.

Maps

Sometimes people go sign-to-sign or link-to-link without ever really knowing where they're going in a larger frame of reference. (Ever found your way through a strange airport? That's probably what you did.) But some people might prefer to have a mental picture of the whole space, especially if they're there often. In badly signed or densely built spaces, like urban neighborhoods, maps may be the only navigational aids they have.

In this chapter, the Clear Entry Points pattern is an example of careful signage combined with environmental cluesthe links should be designed to stand out on the page. A Sequence Map, obviously, is a map; you can use Overview Plus Detail (Chapter 6) to show maps for virtual spaces, too. Modal Panel sort of qualifies as an environmental clue, since the ways out of a modal panel take you right back to where you just were.

I compared virtual spaces to physical ones here. However, virtual spaces have the unique ability to provide a navigational trump card, one that physical spaces can't (yet) provide: the Escape Hatch. Wherever you are, click on that link, and you're back to a familiar page. It's like carrying a wormhole with you. Or a pair of ruby slippers.