James Kalbach
Abstract
This half-day workshop covers principles of web navigation and methods of navigation design with practical examples and exercises. Participants should have some experience creating or maintaining websites and are looking to deepen their design skills. This includes graphic designers, webmasters, usability experts, and beginning to intermediate information architects.
Workshop Details
Course Description
The web has changed in the last decade. The notion of Web 2.0, in particular, marks a second phase of the web characterized by user-generated content, collaboration, communities, and broader participation in general. And new technologies, such as Ajax and Flex, point to a more interactive web with highly functional applications.
Amidst this change, the basic problems of creating a good web navigation system remain. This workshop offers a fresh look at a fundamental topic in creating websites: navigation design. It will offer you insight and practical advice for approaching a range of navigation design problems.
Agenda
Solving the right problem
The course begins with a discussion of Design and Design thinking in general. You’ll see how the philosophy, mission and goals of an organization can be used to guide web design.
Principles of navigation
In navigation design, it’s important to understand overarching principles of navigation behavior. We’ll look at transitional volatility, banner blindness, and the scent of information, among other things.
Elements of navigation: mechanisms, types and pages
Navigational mechanisms are the basic building blocks of navigation systems. But not all mechanisms on a site are equal. You must determine the purpose and importance of navigation mechanisms within your site, bringing similar options together and presenting them as a cohesive unit. This section of the workshop surveys common mechanisms, as well as various functional types of navigation.
Cores and Paths
Finally, you’ll apply many of the principles from throughout the day in a technique called Cores and Paths, which was pioneered by Are Halland in Norway.
After this class, you will be able to…
- Understand and apply basic principles of web navigation in your work
- Recognize different mechanisms, types of navigation, and different page types
- Apply current methods of navigation design to create a unified navigation system
Target Audience
- Beginner to Intermediate IAs
- Usability experts looking to expand web design skills
- Graphic designers and others working in related roles seeking to better understand navigation design
Speaker Details
James Kalbach is a user experience designer with LexisNexis, a leading provider of legal and news information, where he develops interfaces for web-based search applications. He previously served as head of information architecture with Razorfish, Germany. James holds a degree in library and information science from Rutgers University, as well as a Master’s degree in music theory and composition.
James is an assistant editor with Boxes and Arrows, a leading online journal for user experience information (www.boxesandarrows.com). He also is on the organizing committees for the European Information Architecture conference (www.euroia.org) and the IA Konferenz in Germany (www.iakonferenz.org). James is the author of the book Designing Web Navigation (O’Reilly, August 2007).