User Interface Engineering

Several years ago, we came to the realization that there are eight distinct types of navigation pages that a user may encounter, as they work through a web site, trying to locate their target content. Since then, our research consistently shows that the designers who understand these different page types are far more likely to create designs that work well for users.

As we’ve researched further, it’s become clear to us that, out of the eight types, the most important navigation page is the gallery page. Any site with more than one page has a gallery, which is a list of the links to the potential pages that contain the user’s final destination on the site (known in our work as the target content).

In today’s UIEtips, we reach back into the archives to reprint an article where I discussed what we know about building successful gallery pages. I talk about the problems introduced by poor scent and, in particular, the act of forcing users to pogostick (jump up and down in the site’s hierarchy). Click here to access the article.

If your interested in learning more on Galleries, attend our UIE Virtual seminar on August 14, 2008

Have you done something special with your gallery pages? How have users responded? We’d love to hear what you’ve been doing. Leave a comment below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Design, Uncategorized, Web Development . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.