Customer Reviews

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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The title of this book does tend to focus things, doesn't it? A book totally dedicated to working out navigation challenges in Web products means that it is destined to be a one-stop keeper on your shelf. If you work in any capacity on Web front-ends, navigation is often the issue of issues, the source of stimulating and heated team discussions. This book won't end those discussions but the information in it will certainly add calm perspective to them.

_Designing Web Navigation_ seems to have it all in one place, including practice discussion at the end of each chapter and further reading recommendations. The amount of information is impressive. There is not a page without a visual aid of some sort. I certainly like having lots of screenshots of real sites with the commentary of the author.

I also like the practical knowledge of the author which informs his writing -- he emphasizes the variability of the rules in the complex contexts we Web workers tend to work in. Note, for instance, how differently he approaches Amazon's tabbed navigation from how usability guru Jakob Nielsen writes of them. Nielsen never passes up an opportunity to exclaim what is wrong wrong wrong about Amazon's tabs. Kalbach, instead, explains the motivation behind each passing stage in the evolution of those same tabs, giving the dynamic context. This rings true for those of us with daily working knowledge in constructing user interfaces.

I was a bit disappointed that the book did not have more on the specific problems of designing Web *applications* instead of conventional Web sites. However, the book is written is such a way that this is not a problem. The advice and arguments on p.236 "Don't start by designing the navigation on the home page" encapsulates quite well something I have learned working on agile development teams over the years.

I had a few problems with the readability of this book. Page numbers look like squished gnats and all paragraph sub-headings were a pretty but painful light blue. The extremely large line-height weakened the separation of paragraphs.

As I mentioned, this book is chock full of the right material that belongs on your shelf for when you need it...and you will.
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This handsome volume will help web designers learn how to analyze their business needs and translate them into a workable navigation system for their users. Unlike some other design books, James Kalbach doesn't shove his own design principals down the reader's throat. Instead, he cites use cases and usability studies that will help readers figure out which design approach will best suit their needs.

Lots of screenshots from well-known websites, great layout and good organization make the book a pleasure to read. The book starts by explaining general principles, so even if you're new to the concept of interaction design, you'll quickly get up to speed. More advanced readers could skim the first chapters, and plunge in later, where they'll learn things like visual logic and information design. Each chapter ends with a good summary, thought-provoking questions that either reinforce or expand on the chapter's topics, and suggestions for further reading. Note: I do have one quibble with the layout. The page numbers are so small it made my eyes hurt. But everything else about the book's design is inviting and useful.

Caution, though, this is not a coding book. You won't learn how to make pop-up menus or write clean CSS. It's meant to help readers learn how to make decisions about the look and feel of a website. Even though the book is focused on web navigation, "regular" software designers will benefit, too, since so much interaction design is driven by users' expectations that all software should work like the web.

This is an exhaustive book that summarizes a lot of aspects of website navigation. I recommend it mostly to information architects of bigger websites. It is more detailed on navigation than the Polar Bear book (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web), though I still find that book the absolute handbook on the topic.

The book consists of three parts:
The first part is about common user behaviours, types of navigation systems, labeling, etc. This part summarizes a lot of things you probably know but maybe it is not as structured in your head as the author makes it.

In the second part, the author presents a framework on how to design web navigation. From the evaluation to the actual visual layout of the navigation system, all relevant phases are discussed with examples.

The third part is about special navigation: search, social tagging and RIAs. A good intro to the topics with some interface patterns.

The book has a lot of screenshots that are quite current. Some chapters are quite self-explaining (ie. what are tag clouds, or what types of pages there are) but that is normal for a book that aims to be a baedeker for all things related to the topic.

This book's really targeted to make you think about how to make your site's visitors best able to easily and repeatedly find content you deem important. You won't find bits on CSS, Javascript, or Ajax. Instead you'll find out things such as selecting appropriate navigation menu styles for given contexts, information architectures, the impact of tagging systems, and some of the complexities around search.

The book's beautifully laid out with lots of shots of real websites scattered across full color pages to help illustrate important points.

The first chapters are pretty academic and can be pretty dry, but they provide good information on content/information architecture. The rest of the book is an easier read, but that doesn't mean you should skip the first chapters. Lots of good sidebars call out specific topics -- accessibility is a hot topic throughout the book and gets a lot of sidebar treatment.

The book's full of gems such as how you should consider workflows in navigation (think shopping cart systems, e.g.), or the differences between "lingo" and vocabularies. There are also a bunch of great references to other works, and each chapter has some nice exercises which are actually pertinent and helpful in making the reader more aware of that chapter's points.

I was surprised that globalization/localization didn't get more treatment in the book, but there are quite a few example screenshots and discussions around international websites.

Overall it's a very interesting, thought-provoking book.

This book is shockingly below O'Reilly's usual design and quality standards. It's full of pointless little 'design'-elements, such as lines, colored backgrounds and entirely useless colored tabs down the outside of the book. The font's barely legible, and the sub- and sub-sub- and sub-sub-sub- headers are in a light blue and fairly fade into the page background. The pull quotes at the start of each chapter are light grey on light blue, etc.
The content is very breezy, seemingly written by and for the PowerPoint generation. Topics are rarely developed for more than one page. There are lists and bullet points and tables galore, but not very many cogent discussions of non-obvious navigation issues. I doubt anybody who's been working in the web development or design fields (or actually, even using the web) for the past 2 or 3 years will find any new information here.
My copy of the book is badly printed, with the darkness of the ink varying from page to page.
For a book with the subtitle "Optimizing the User Experience", you'd think they'd have put some thought into the Reader Experience.

I've read a few books now on usability, accessibility, navigation design, etc. Some of these, such as Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" were excellent, and really changed the way I looked at web design. Nevertheless, this book still managed to floor me -- throughout, I was exposed to critical design concepts that I had never even heard of, and to new and deeper perspectives on those that I already knew of.

One thing that I especially liked about this book, is that in contrast to many other books or articles in this genre, Kalbach provides scientific research to back up his claims about what is and isn't usable. Many other books will make claims that something is a best practice, and back it up by citing other people who say so, but won't back their claims up with *actual data*. Many of the studies that Kalbach contradict "popular wisdom" on usability in areas such as the usefulness of breadcrumbs, or the appropriate length of anchor text.

I also enjoyed the questions/exercises at the end of each chapter. The book is extremely information-rich, with many deep concepts packed into each chapter. It was nice to give my brain a refresher at the end of each chapter, to make sure that I had retained everything.

I literally cannot think of a single problem that I had with this book -- it was accessible, in-depth, well ordered, and aesthetically pleasing -- I could hardly put it down. There are many other good books out there on these topics, but none of them that I've found has managed to pack as much useful information between the covers as this one, and some of the topics, I've seen covered nowhere else.

This is how computer science texts should be written! A+++.

This is a helpful resource for new and experienced designers, though it is not groundbreaking. It's more of a compendium of approaches. I believe the editing was not very thorough, as I found several typos.

The ability to navigate a web site can make or break your user's experience. I learned far more than I thought even existed in the book Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience by James Kalbach. It's obviously more than just putting a list of links down the left side of the screen...

Contents:
Part 1 - Foundations of Web Navigation: Introducing Web Navigation; Understanding Navigation; Mechanisms of Navigation; Types of Navigation; Labeling Navigation
Part 2 - A Framework for Navigation Design: Evaluation; Analysis; Architecture; Layout; Presentation
Part 3 - Navigation in Special Contexts: Navigation and Search; Navigation and Social Tagging Systems; Navigation and Rich Web Applications
References; Index

If you tend to think more like a developer than a designer, then you pretty much think that a list of navigation links are all you need. Uh, no... Kalbach has compiled a wealth of information here that spans both the theory and the practice of web navigation. Rather than just say "do this, this, and this", he starts off with the foundational theory behind how people think about getting around a web site. Once that's presented, you have the proper grounding to start looking at particular types. The chapter on navigation mechanisms lays out all the different options, such as step-type navigation, paging-type navigation, tree navigation, and more. Classifying the different types in your mind helps to figure out when you might want to consider options like tabbed navigation over breadcrumb trails. By the time you've gone through the book, there's little you haven't covered on the topic.

I also appreciated the way the book is designed. O'Reilly went with a full-color layout, which means that all the websites Kalbach uses for examples accurately reflect his points. Black and white just wouldn't cut it here. Also, the edges of the pages are color-coded by chapter, so it makes it very easy to find the particular chapter you're looking for. I always have a better feeling about a design book when the book's design is high quality. In this case, I felt very good...

This really should be on the reading list of anyone who designs websites that go more than one page deep. Not only will you design better sites, but your users will thank you.

In today's day and age where the Internet is a part of our everyday life, there has never been a time more appropriate now then to have really good navigation on your or your client's website. As sites grow more advanced and complex, it is vital to the success of your website that users are able to find what they need in a timely fashion without jumping through hoops to get there.

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experiencehelps you lay the ground work to achieve a great user interaction experience. This full-color O'Reilly book clearly explains the full process of designing web navigation in three parts: Foundations of Web Navigation, A Framework for Navigation Design, and Navigation in Special Contexts.

In Foundations, the author writes an adequate analysis of various types of navigation systems, such as the search model, browse model, or the liquid information model to name only a few. He describes why poor navigation design will turn away users and may actually decrease the credibility of your website. Furthermore he touches on topics such as banner blindness where your users may not truly notice intentional site navigation, simply because back in their minds it looks like a vertical advertisement banner.

In Framework, Kalbach evaluates different forms of navigation for different types of sites. He talks about the need to engage your users to help determine what style will work best for your target audience. Moreover, he discusses types of technologies that may be implemented such as back-end technologies and front-end technologies like CSS and JavaScript.

James Kalbach does an excellent job describing every facet of this complex and sometimes daunting process in a very detailed yet easy to comprehend fashion. He backs up all the research he has done with references as well as providing great additional reading and other resources. The full-color diagrams and case studies of existing navigations on real-world websites prove invaluable to the reader. One small complaint I have is that for a book on designing navigation, the page numbers are quite small and difficult to glance at when you are flipping through the book. Aside from this small glitch, as it were, this book is a must have in every web developer or designer's library. Even if you consider yourself to be an expert at web page flow, you cannot go without learning a rule or two, and perhaps some great what not to dos in this book.

This isn't a book in which the author has thrown in a grab bag of his experiences together and presented them with splashy graphics. Instead, Kalbach breaks out concepts, often presenting conflicting points of view (he mentions Alan Cooper's call to dispense with navigation entirely) and embellishes it with research from the fields of usability and human factors. This approach makes the book feel academic but it doesn't take away from the readability of the text at all. (In fact, it would make a pretty good textbook for a related course)

At one point in the initial chapter, Kalbach quotes research from usability expert Jared Spool that suggests that users who use Search to find a page in a web site are much less likely to browse the site than if they found the page using the site's own navigational aids.

This point is a critical one because it underpins Kalbach's focus on navigation. You can rely on Search to get users to your page, but the search engine now becomes the navigation of choice for the users - it has no vested interest in keeping users on your site. If you want your web site to be sticky, then design great navigation.

A little later when explaining the types of navigation and constructing key questions to formulate when designing navigation, you have the epiphany that this book isn't just about web sites. Instead it is laying down the paradigm for the flow of any application - networked or otherwise.