In this article, Luca Leone and Anders Schmidt Hansen will investigate an alternative to the classic “pages and links” paradigm, a model dubbed “zoom navigation.” Perhaps the reason why zooming interfaces are rare is that traditional HTML linking quickly became the dominant navigation paradigm, and zooming navigation presented problems of implementation, but we have good reasons now in a multi-device world to give zooming navigation another chance and to experiment with ideas and implementations. At the end of the article, they will introduce some prototypes and discuss their technical implementations.
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In this article, Ben Callahan will help you be more successful with your web projects by starting at the beginning; by working from day one to help set your client’s expectations about what’s going to happen, and by working throughout a project’s life cycle to do the same. By the end of this article, you’ll find yourself more inspired to invest in your own understanding of how the web works, and more willing to invest in your teammates’ understanding. Ben hopes you’ll feel excited to try a new approach, but he also that you’ll be empowered to tear these pages up if they don’t work for you. Only you, your team and your customer can figure out the best way to approach a project. The time is now — so, get to it!
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Back in spring 2013, Smashing Magazine sported a <select> menu as its mobile navigation. It wasn’t considered an anti-pattern back then and Marco Hengstenberg still thinks it’s a viable solution to the complex problem of how to build accessible and functional cross-device navigation. Brad Frost wrote a few words about the pros and cons of this pattern on his blog and Marco couldn’t agree more. In this article, Marco will explain how he helped rebuild the mobile navigation in order to enhance the experience for the readers of Smashing Magazine.
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Given the importance of filtering, Christian Holst and the entire team at the Baymard Institute spent the nine months researching how users browse, filter and evaluate products in e-commerce product lists. At the core of this research was a large-scale usability study testing 19 leading e-commerce websites with real end users, following the think-aloud protocol. In this article Christian will take a closer look at some of the research findings related to the users’ filtering experience. He’ll walk through each of some filtering insights, showing you the usability test findings, examining the benchmark data and presenting best practice examples for creating a good e-commerce filtering experience.
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A quick query of “mobile navigation” returns thousands of opinions on navigation patterns, including the “hamburger” menu, front-end plugins, frameworks and plenty of other tools. Despite this changing landscape of tools and design trends, a successful navigation system sends users on the path to the exact content they need at the right time. In this article, Patrick Marsceill will explore the beginnings of the design process, as well as techniques specific to mobile ideation, and a unique idea for building a prototype navigation system in Keynote.
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To help balance the craving for visual simplicity with the need to keep websites easy to navigate, you can borrow some concepts from the world of wayfinding. In this article, Dennis Kardys will show you how you can apply these concepts to the mobile web. Keep in mind that every person who browses an application is making their way through a space — often an unfamiliar one. As the user embarks on their journey, what types of wayfinding assistance are you providing to guide them?
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The last step of this series is to efficiently simplify the navigation experience — specifically, by carefully designing interaction with the navigation menu. When designing interaction with any type of navigation menu, we have to consider aspects sush as symbols, levels, target areas and functional context. It is possible to design these aspects in different ways. Designers often experiment with new techniques to create a more exciting navigation experience. However, most users just want to get to the content with as little fuss as possible. For those users, designing the aforementioned aspects to be as simple, predictable and comfortable as possible is important.
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The second part of this series addresses the third step into making navigation as simple and predictable as possible, and discusses which type of navigation menu is best suited to which content. A navigation menu is any area of an interface that presents navigation options to enable users to find content on the website. A common distinction in navigation models is between a primary, traditional navigation system and secondary, alternate navigation models. Exactly defining this distinction is difficult.
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In this second part, Pete Smart will share what travelling 2517 miles taught him. Every day, he had 24 hours to observe a problem, attempt to solve it and then communicate the solution. For more of an introduction to the adventure, “50 Problems in 50 Days, Part 1: Real Empathy for Innovation” gives an overview of the project.
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Navigation is merely a means to an end, and this is why users have contrasting expectations about content and navigation. While content is supposed to be unique and exciting, navigating to it is supposed to be as simple as possible. In this article, you will find a guide to efficiently simplifying the navigation experience, by analyzing the type and amount of content as well as choosing and designing the right type of navigation menu!
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