Note: Coordinating your information architecture, interaction design, visual design, and usability objectives into a long-term scalable deployment strategy presents numerous advantages. See "Ongoing Operations" section.
The web provides a user with a vast variety of interaction methods: chat, video, audio, multimedia, text, graphics, WAP, phone, etc.
A web presence must understand and prioritize what content it wants to deliver to the user (information architecture).
Assuming you have done your homework on your users likes and dislikes, you must then proceed to decide which are delivery mechanisms are best suited for different content.
Navigation is the single most important interaction tool available to users. It lets people decide how and when they can access content.
It must be:
Be easy to learn
Consistent
Give users feedback
Check out Method's approach
Use understandable nomenclature
The way we create experiences is by focusing on:
usability
functionality
availability
reliability
usefulness
Always give the user an indicator of:
Where they are
What can they do
Where can they go
General rules:
Provide redundant text navigation for users surfing with text only (and alt tags).
The designer's primary objective is to is to highlight the most important elements of the site.
Be brief and descriptive.
Page titles should repeat the site name and distinguish that page from the others on the site.
Use workflows to show how a particular transaction occurs.
The reason to think about these workflow issues is to:
Make sure you understand what your users' main paths are through the site.
Make sure they can locate the information they need as quickly and easily as possible.
Note: Coordinating your information architecture, interaction design,