Designing Web Navigation is subtitled “Optimizing the User Experience”, and therefore drew my attention immediately. Written by James Kalbach, and published by O’Reilly, this book is also elegeantly designed and in full-colour with examples throughout. Once again the book itself conveys it’s own message – that user experience is holistic and that products must not only be readable and useful, but enjoyable.
In Part I of Designing Web Navigation, Kalbach begins by explaining web navigation through discussing how users behave and navigate throughout the web, including their behaviours and typical mechanisms used. Types of navigation and labeling are considered.
In Part II, Kalbach offers a framework for navigation design, from evaluation through analysis of business goals, content, technology, and user research. He continues by discussing architecture and information structures along with organizational schemes, once again merging user needs with content and context. Layout from visual logic through page templates and wireframes are considered, along with presentation in terms of information design, interacting with navigation, and graphic design.
Finally, in Part III, Kalbach puts navigation in “special contexts” such as prior to or after search, within faceted browsing and social tagging systems, and finally when used within rich internet applications.
As the world wide web evolves and rich internet applications continue to be designed and developed, Designing Web Navigation offers a thorough look at designing navigation effectively. Along with Designing Interfaces, this book is one that occupies an honoured place on my shelf, and is another must-read for any user experience designer. The techniques used here can be applied on the web or anywhere interface navigation is used.
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