Mark Hurst has an interesting discussion on the Page Paradigm. Mark's discussion affirms the anxiety I've been feeling lately about navigation elements. I'm tracking data about how people use navigation in order to get rid of navigation in local nav when those widgets become redundant or less important. I'm thinking about things such as removing secondary navigation side bars as much as possible in favor of contextual navigation. For example, it's clear in some areas of our site people need that context. If someone is viweing the Cisco company page, pogoing back to a listing of companies they track in their companies page is a common behavior, so they can then read the new content for the Nortel page or whatever. But whether or not this has to do be done with big-assed local nav lists or breadcrumbs is the question up for grabs. I guess observing how people interact is the only way to get some real idea of people, for instance, prefer to use the back button rather than looking for and clicking up through the hierarchy presented in breadcrumbs, sifting through siblings in secondary nav, etc.

I find myself conflicted over something Mark says, which flies in the face of what I've read in the IA literature. He says "USERS DON'T CARE WHERE THEY ARE IN THE WEBSITE" (caps are his). I think I'm conflicted over the words more than with what I understand him to be saying. For instance, I think it's true that they want to accomplish goals they came to the site with -- to find a dress in size 8, to purchase a book on gardening, to find information about a skin condition. But in certain contexts I think it IS necessary to show where you are. Steps in a checkout process come to mind. In other places, it makes sense to see, for instance that I searched for posters by Robert Rauschenberg, so how do I get back to that listing of results or see other artists in that period. I guess more important than where you are is, where can you go? Contextual navigation, proper matching of new paths related to your current task is what's more important in these instances, not where should navigation widgets live and how many levels do we show. But, let' get back to Mark's emphasized statment about users caring where they are. What he says is that goals are important and consistency (in how you present navigation, etc.) is less important. That's the message for me in all of this.

I like Mark's discussion because it brings me back to the idea that motivated me when I studied library and info. science in the first place -- information systems are meant to serve a person having a need in the real world by getting them relevant information they can turn into knowledge and then action in the real world. That's a fundamental purpose of libraries and it's the same message online, whether your selling goods or providing access to information. In an industry that spends so much time deconstructing the widgets that make the output of our work, I find it refreshing to read this reminder to see the forest for the trees. I know, for myself, that I spend too much time in those very details.

This is also discussed at: iaslash, Peterme, ElegantHack.