Navigation Architecture - I

If there is any one particular aspect that impacts usability the most, it would be navigation, especially in websites. Because of their poor navigation, websites tend to be mazes in which we have all been lost in, and found ourselves asking: where am I? How did I get here? Where do I go from here? Where is the page that I just looked at?

A website consists of a collection of webpages organized in a hierarchical structure where the main sections are at the highest level. Within every section, there could be number of sub-sections, and within every sub-section, there could be number of sub-sub-sections, until a node or a leaf is reached which would be the final destination webpage.

In essence, the structure of a website is exactly the same as the structure of the folders in our computer which is typically accessed using a tree component like Windows Explorer. The view of the list of folders could be a tree, thumbnails, carousel, wheel, wall, or a directory. Some views are better suited than others for a particular content. For example, a carousel would be ideal for a small list of pictures but terrible for a large list of job descriptions for which a directory would be far more suitable. Furthermore, different users prefer different views. For example, novice consumers prefer a thumbnail view while advanced technical users tend to prefer a tree view.

The great majority of websites use horizontal tabs as their main navigation paradigm, yet, while tabs are suitable for flat structures, they are quite inappropriate for hierarchical structures. In order to compensate, web designers combine tabs with horizontal or vertical menu bars as shown below. This combination falls flat on its face when the hierarchical structure has more than two levels.