my design errors

part 1 - navigation

main page

• back to articles
• my own design errors - part one
  • first try
  • my master plan
  • my master failure
  • the fix

first try

Take a close look at the graphic below. It is the first version of the navigation for each section of this site.

original navigation element

See any problems. I didn't when I first designed the site. I'll start at the beginning - this is what I wanted to accomplish.

my master plan

I wanted an extremely simple site that would be graphic-free except for the illustrative pictures. I wanted to rely on a tried-and-true navigation element - the table of contents or toc - to describe the innards of each section of the site. I specifically wanted to create a virtual page. That is, it would be irrelevant exactly where a user was on a subsection of the site, they would always be presented with the same toc. I thought this would free the viewer from any concerns about which physical file they were viewing. The only thing a viewer would know is that they were in a subsection, say on margins, and that there were several topics to be discussed and they could get to these topics through the toc.

In search of this end, I replicated the same toc on each real page. As a viewer clicked each toc element, they would be brought to this or that topic. The topics might be on different physical pages, but all topics were on the same virtual page. I then gave the viewer a way to always get to the toc from any part of the page. I eschewed the typical prev and next buttons.

my master failure

Any problems so far? Well, look at the green bar that says page blah of blah. That's right. After I went to great lengths to isolate the viewer from the underlying file structure, I present them with page information that is thoroughly unusable. See, in order to know what "page" you are on, you have to view the URL information in the browser address bar to determine which file you are viewing.

Oops.

the fix

I saved my own day by relating page and topic information in the table of contents, so the page blah of blah element now made sense. It also directly enhanced the ability to move backwards and forwards in the subsection. Before this, the viewer would have to take a trip to the top of the page, view the table of contents, and then click on the next topic if they could remember the previous topic. The page information in the toc really helped.

Some would say I didn't have enough devices for moving around the subsection. But the worst part of my former design was not the lack of devices but the presence of information that served no purpose and only confused the viewer.

A big screw up on my part. I wanted to keep page elements to a minimum, and wound up having to add to the design of the page. Design - in my case, a fairly slick look in my humble opinion - was compromised to provide usability.

And that's the only route a designer should take.