[Sigia-l] DHTML Menus and Usability

[David Heller]

>>I don't know if this is what you want to hear, but here it is anyway
(:-): menus are evil. 

I'm sorry, this is just a gross generalization that really depends on
the kind of complexity you are trying to manage and quite honestly on
the clarity of your menu taxonomy. 

Having just come out of a usability lab last week with a system using
menus, I have two comments.
1. Users understand menus. They know what they are there for and they
are quite adept as using it for a sniffing point to find functionality
that is not apparent otherwise.

2. Menus are very learnable systems when their taxonomies are done well.
How do you do a good taxonomy? Well then that is a different question.
;-)

That being said, my taxonomies failed a few times and I still don't have
appropriate alternatives. But if I took all that navigation and
interactive functionality and exposed it directly I would have a HUGE
mess, actually my previous UI that this is a re-design did just that and
users complained profusely about not being able to use it as it was just
too much and it required the page to scroll.

When you hit a certain level of complexity in your system you have to
change from the point of view of information design to interaction
design to increase effectiveness of your UI. The question is how much
and when to reveal complexity vs. how to design in all the complexity
for all users at all times. Menus is one method of doing a level of
"revelation", but as Ziya said, all hiding of options is the same as
menus, so why differentiate.

Anyway, this is me. ;-) others?

-- Dave