Programmers’ Perspective
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006I have been coding in HTML since I was 16 or so and have been intrigued by the way that humans interact with graphical user interfaces (GUI) for as long as I can remember. Human’s rely on experiences with which they feel comfortable in order to logically navigate through new, unfamiliar territory.This science can really by applied to most anything: building layouts, car dashboards, department stores, magazines. As long as people have lived a normal social life here on planet Earth, they most likely have encountered something which introduced them to the basic idea of a table of contents or central point of navigation. This just seems natural to most people.
More recently, the Web 2.0 movement has begun to develop the Internet into a node-based navigation system instead. With the introduction of tags, users can simply state what they are looking for (i.e.: “cooking” or “pets”) much like a search engine except instead of being directed to a website which may or may not have what the user is looking for, the user is (in most cases) presented with a list of items that meet their needs which other users have added to their own respective accounts. The idea of a social network being the content provision instead of a Russian-roulette style search means that users will be able to get to what they are looking for a lot faster since other users are extremely unlikely to add junk to their own accounts from which the results will be drawn.
A few sites which use tags are del.icio.us, a social bookmarking system, 43 Things, a collective list of goals which users have added and Digg, a technology news website. All three of these websites utilize tags to organize their content in one way or another. A user can search for whatever they are searching for by searching for one or more tags (i.e.: “dog” or “politics”). The website searches through it’s database of items (links, files, articles, etc) that other users have listed and tagged with the same tag and returns the results to the user. It’s logical, clear and obvious how to look for something. Most human’s can understand how to do this.
This only covers navigation around the Web. What about navigation around a web site? Links have always been the obvious method by which a user moves from one place on a website to another, but how and where links are presented have changed dramatically over the past five to ten years. Primary navigation menus have moved from a pure vertical form into other forms such as a horizontal bar across the top of a page or a navigation bar whose methods only become obvious when you begin to interact with it (such as Chipotle’s website).
Once again, a human needs some concept of the navigation or layout of a web site’s interface to be fashioned, or at least similar in some way, to something else in life of which they have internalized the process of. For instance, if someone has been locked away in a basement for all of their life and have had no other literature except for 3-fold pamphlets, they would know how to get around a 3-fold pamphlet pretty well! That’s the navigation system which they are used to. They might expect a front page with a title and possibly a general description as to what is inside as well as a back page containing contact information and maybe a map, if that is applicable. They would then expect to open the pamphlet to find their first taste of real information regarding the subject. One more unfolding reveals everything else. They know to expect anything from a really disappointing layout or possibly to be blown away by a wonderous view of a mountain or maybe even just a lot of data that might keep them occupied for a few more minutes. The general idea is that they know their way around such a piece of literature.
Think about hopping into a jet. Yep, a jet. Go ahead and take ‘er up. What’s that? You don’t know how to fly one?! That’s just because you have not yet used the system of navigation which that jet uses. I would be willing to bet that if you had flown another plane before, at least some of the controls would look familiar to you. That’s the power of familiarity!
Now, I understand that there is a vast difference between flying a jet and opening a 3-fold pamphlet, but the idea is the same. That person who has been in the basement all of their lives will most likely know what to do with a book within a few minutes of pondering, don’t you think?
Thus we return to navigating around a web site using a GUI. As a web designer, it is my job to ensure that nearly anyone who visits a web site I’ve created would be able to identify what the different parts do. I could go on for pages about examples, but try it out. Look around the web for a control for your experiment. Find a page that you’ve never been to before and try to see if you can identify what all the various components do without clicking on anything. If you’ve been using the Internet for long, you most likely will be able to label everything pretty accurately. Then place yourself in the mindset of a mid-15th centrury nobleman. Books and possibly scrolls are all you’ve ever seen regarding any sort of information delivery system. Chances are, that Web site does not look so obvious to you anymore. There is no “click,” no “scrolling.” Starting to get the idea?
Only recently have I really begin to mature in my understanding about how incredibly large the difficulties regarding this topic are. It’s most certainly a philisophical point of debate and consideration. I’m just curious to see how the Web 2.0 movement continues to evolve the Internet.
