Description
This book takes the first in-depth look at designing Web site navigation using design strategies that help you uncover solutions that work for your site and audience. It focuses on designing by purpose, with chapters on entertainment, shopping, identity, learning, information, and community sites. Comes with a CD-ROM containing software demos and a "netography" of related Web resources.
Full Description
Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience offers the first in depth look at designing web site navigation. Author Jennifer Fleming offers design strategies to help you uncover solutions that work for your site and audience.
Acclaimed Web design author Lynda Weinman says in the foreword to this book: "Kudos to Fleming for her excellent research, approachable tone and generosity of information. If you're looking for help in giving your site's visitors a more positive experience than they get today, this book is an excellent place to start. It provides ideas and direction, not preachy rules that apply to someone else's site."
The first half of the book suggests goals and processes for developing workable navigation schemes. Topics include:
- Basic concepts in navigation
- Traits of navigation that work
- User testing and user-centered design
- Site architecture
- Interface and interaction design
The second half of
Web Navigation focuses on designing by purpose, with chapters on entertainment, shopping, identity, learning, information, and community sites. Through case studies and interviews, each section explains common navigation problems and presents real world solutions and advice. Designer interviews feature conversations with industry leaders such as Clement Mok, Jakob Nielsen, and Nathan Shedroff. Case studies include sites such as FAO Schwarz, National Geographic, and IBM.
The accompanying CD-ROM is more than just a handy drink coaster. It serves as a launchpad to the sites mentioned in the text, and also offers software demos and a "netography" of related Web resources. "The Web needs more books like this if it to evolve to the next level," Weinman writes. "I believe this book can help you make your site a better place, regardless of whether your purpose is community-building, commerce, education, entertainment, information, or hobby. It's written is such an enjoyable, conversational tone that you may have trouble putting it down; I certainly did. I wholeheartedly recommend it for all Web publishers."
Colophon
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience is a beagle. Beagles are small hound dogs whose exact origins are unknown, but whose ancestry is believed to date back to ancient Greece and France. Precursors of the modern beagle have been popular hunting dogs in Great Britain and France since the Middle Ages. Today’s beagle was bred for hunting as a pack dog, with an excellent sense of smell. Due to their droopy, rounded ears and their expressive, sad-looking eyes, as well as their gentle and affectionate natures, beagles are consistently ranked as one of the ten most popular breeds of dog in the United States. Beagles have also made their way into popular culture: Charlie Brown’s pet dog Snoopy, created by Charles M. Schultz, may not look much like a beagle, but he does exhibit the intelligence, gentleness, and loyalty of his breed. (Most beagles, however, don'’t dance as well as Snoopy does.) Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced with Quark XPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font. Whenever possible, our books use Rep-Kover™, a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds Rep-Kover™s limit, perfect binding is used.
The inside layout was designed by Edie Freedman and modified by Nancy Priest. Text was prepared in FrameMaker by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book; the constant-width font used in this book is Letter Gothic. The illustrations that appear in the book were created in Macromedia Freehand 7.0 by Robert Romano. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O’Leary.
