Search as Navigation
Search Is Just a Sophisticated Menu—Or Not
Just now, on the previous page, I included search as navigation. Like scrolling, search is a type of navigation that we often don’t think about as navigation.
The most important thing to remember is that to use a search well, users need to know what they want. Or the search needs to be smart enough to interpret what they want and make suggestions.
In a large, complex structure, search can be an extremely valuable way to find content or access things that would otherwise be hard to find. However, search can also be a wonderful way to get completely lost.
You should intentionally decide what role search will play in the navigation. If it is more of an add-on that will rarely be used, place it away from the main action in your design and make it visually quiet. But if you plan to make your search sophisticated and highly useful, put it in the spotlight!
Just don’t switch those. A highly visible and highly useless search is a recipe for confusion.
Google Is the Internet’s Main Menu
The most extreme example of search-as-navigation is, of course, Google. You could say that the simplest content structures, like our ...
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