如何设计软件或者网站的导航
吕庆祥
所以导航设计的是否合理就显的非常的重要，尤其是对于复杂的软件，或者网站。比如门户。所以在这里我们讨论这个问题是非常有意义的。我以前的时候，曾经专 门研究过这个问题。当然因为这里发送附件的大小所限，我得把我的研究报告压缩成1mb的才可以发送到这里。不过我想我们在这里的交流只是一种简单的交流。 据我的经验，其实ue的上的很多的问题是需要面对面的交流的。因为涉及到很多的平衡。有很多时候，或者说是全部，我们都是要进行矛盾的选择的。呵呵。
首先在这里我想发部我当时，写的导航的作用，然后我会把我对导航的研究发到上面来。
另外我不太理解的是，是不是每个人都可以收到信，为什么没有太多回应，是不是大家对这些ue上的问题，都不关心，还是我们的运作机制有问题。我觉得作为发 起人，我们应该做的更多。因为我们希望它这个组织可以成长起来，呵呵，我们就得付出。也许大家会担心这个组织会虎头蛇尾，但是我要说，那不是我们做事的风 格。
希望大家一起努力，其实我们这里的东西会越越多的。这是我研究的报告的大纲，我会按照这个大纲陆续的把我对导航的研究发到上面来。当然会附上一些方法。
1.导航的作用
2.导航设计应该遵守的原则
3.导航可以给用户带来什么
4.导航设计的方法
5.导航的呈现形式的演进
6.导航未来的发展趋势
一.
导航的定义
网站中为网友提供导引的标识。
二. 导航的作用
1. 方向性的路标：告诉浏览者你在哪里？你去了哪里？你还能去哪里？使之在各频道自由切换，不会迷路
2. 导购：告诉浏览者最新的东西是什么？最重要的是什么？我们主推的是什么？从而引导浏览者去我们希望他们去的地方
3. 网站的信息架构：使浏览者在看完我们的导航，对我们的内容，我们服务有一个大概的了解，帮助网友迅速找到和使用我们的服务
4. 快捷方式：为我们的重点内容和主要服务，提供快捷方式，便于网友浏览。
--
nickle user experience engineer
nickl...@gmail.com
MAKING IT FINDABLE
IF THE USER CAN'T FIND IT, IT'S NOT THERE
It is frequently said that navigation is 80% of good usability. I've
often wondered what that means. What are the parameters that
make a site navigable? What specifically do I need to get right to
automatically have it be 80% good?
User-centered Web designers answer this question reflexively. Good
navigation means good information architecture. Good information
architecture means having a hierarchical structure and the right
labels.
Having the right structure means deriving the hierarchy that reflects
users' mental organization of the information. Using the right labels
means ignoring the organization's (branded) terms for things and
adopting the users' vocabulary for tokens and categories.
These two parameters -- structure and labels -- are asserted to be as
independent and complimentary. Neither is individually sufficient to
trigger that 80% usability threshold. You have to get both right.
WHICH COMES FIRST? THE LABEL OR THE STRUCTURE?
According to Rosenfeld and Morville (1998), identifying the right
structure depends on how well the target users know the taxonomy or
classification of the content of the site. Exact schemes, such as
alphabetical order or organizational structure, are best used when it
is
certain that users know the specific labels for the information they
are
seeking. Ambiguous schemes, such as organization by topic area, are
preferred when users may not know keywords or specific content
names, or when they may need to browse through the content to find
what they need.
Organizational structures can be created organically, based on designer
intuition or by adopting existing label sets; through experts
performing
professional indexing; or via user-centered methods in which user input
/ feedback is incorporated to construct and validate the information
organization.
LARGE, NOT VENTI
Getting the labels right means matching the names for things to the
words that the users use to refer to them. In creating effective
labels,
designers need to:
- consider how much target users will know about the system and
domain,
- minimize jargon, particularly when speaking to a general population,
- avoid ambiguity.
Labeling systems can come from existing labels sets, benchmarks across
other Web sites, experts, and users. The best labels are typically
generated directly by representative users.
When not informed by user-centered research strategies, both structural
design and label creation can suffer from what Fleming (1998) refers
to as the "disease of familiarity." That is, designers often assume
that
users know as much about the organization or topic as they do
because they have a difficult time recalling what it's like to not know
something. The result is an architecture that reflects the internal
structure and labels of the organization. These architectures can often
prove difficult for users who are not intimately familiar with the
organization (Martin, 1999).
As such, it is critical to gather user data to motivate and externally
validate any proposed architecture.
Flash back to reality, again. You have a short timeline and a limited
budget. You can conduct some user research, but never as much as
you would like to. You need to optimize your efforts.
You can focus your research on deriving a solid user-centered structure
or clear labels reflecting the users' vocabulary. Which do you pick?
Resnick and Sanchez (2004) sought to answer exactly this question.
They conducted a controlled experiment to explore the relative value
of a user-defined structure versus user-generated labels in determining
perceived ease-of-use and efficiency of a Health Product shopping
Web site.
THE STUDY
To prepare the study materials, Resnick and Sanchez conducted a
series of preliminary norming exercises.
First they conducted a survey of existing health food Web sites to
identify existing schemes for product organization. They found two
prevalent themes: by product (e.g., bars, pills, books) and by task
(e.g., weight loss, reduce stress).
Then they conducted a card sorting task with ten participants to
generate groupings and labels for the to-be-included elements. Users
indicated a clear preference for the task-organization within the card
sorting task.
Finally, they conducted a category label ranking task with 20 new
participants to evaluate the goodness-of-fit between proposed content
and category labels. They used these findings to derive three levels of
labeling.
To test the relative contributions of user structure and good labels,
Resnick and Sanchez created 6 versions of a fictitious health food
website that systematically varied structure and label quality:
- Task-structure / Good Labels
- Task-structure / Medium Labels
- Task-structure / Poor Labels
- Product-Structure / Good Labels
- Product-Structure / Medium Labels
- Product Structure / Poor Labels
They then recruited 60 more participants complete a shopping scenario
on the fictitious site. Within the scenario each participant was
instructed
to collect six specific items on the site.
Resnick and Sanchez hypothesized that since the majority of the
participants in the card sort had derived a task-based organization,
that the task-based structure would prove easier to navigate than the
product-based structure.
They also hypothesized that users would be more efficient on the site
with good category labels than on the site with medium or poor labels.
They measured efficiency via time to complete the task, number of
clicks, number of errors, and number of products found.
SOME THINGS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Resnick and Sanchez' data shows that good labels had a robust effect
on performance:
- Time: Participants were 90% more efficient on the site with good
labels than with poor labels.
- Number of clicks: The site with good labels required 25% fewer
clicks to complete the task.
- Errors: Participants committed significantly less errors (strays
from optimal path) on sites with better labels.
- Number of items found: Participants found significantly more items.
- Satisfaction: Participants' satisfaction ratings were significantly
higher on sites with better labels.
The findings for structure were somewhat different.
First, users were more efficient using the product-based structure
than the task-based structure. This enhanced performance on the
product-centered organizations is in conflict with their tendency to
organize the content by task in the preliminary card sorting study.
Second, structure had a significant impact on task efficiency for
number
of clicks and number of errors. However, efficiency differences by
structural type were only meaningful for the test sites with bad
labels.
For sites with good labels, there was no benefit to having one site
structure over the other.
EVEN WASHINGTON, DC IS NAVIGABLE IF THE STREET
SIGNS ARE GOOD
These findings -- that labels matter more than structure -- are not
surprising if you think about it.
When you land in a new city, if the street signs are visible you can
get
around without learning the structure of the street layout.
If the signs are hard to see or missing, a familiar -- or at least
predictable -- structure helps. In a predictable city like New York,
once you know where you are, you can predict where you are going
based on the 44th street, then 45th street, then 46th street grid
structure.
Not so in cities like Washington, which is designed on a difficult-to-
intuit diagonal spoke structure, or Bombay, where streets emerged
organically.
So, Resnick and Sanchez suggest that the key to good architecture,
and by extension usable navigation, is good labels. If you get the
labels
right, you are most of the way there.
References and charts for this newsletter are posted at:
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/apr05.asp
______________________________
____________________
The Pragmatic Ergonomist, Dr. Eric Schaffer
This structure vs. label study is interesting, but be careful. I have
seen disasters when wonderful labels are placed in the wrong structure.
For example, an alphabetic structure where the user does not know the
word (is it "Hire Employee" or "New Employee"?). I am quite sure it is
worthwhile continuing to design, refine, and validate the structure as
well as the labels. In fact, it will cost little extra to attend fully
to both
as the research methods can be combined into a single test session.
吕庆祥
吕庆祥
我把这片文章放在了四个附件里。当然之所以这么做还是因为这个小组上传文件大小的限制，不能大于1mb。
这是第一个 导航－1
usability guru 对于这个问题的看法 来自useit.com
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000109.html