[Sigia-l] DHTML Menus and Usability

[David Heller]

Great resources and proving a more important point. It all depends. If
we are speaking about informatin navigation, then I agree w/ all the
resources below and that might be what Katie needs. I think the best
example and case is the comparision of MSNBC to CNN or even NYTimes.
While getting to information is quicker and could be said to be more
efficient (I think this is a case of the overwhelming flaw of usability
testing) the experience that a user gets on MSNBC is so much more
engaging than a mere task-oriented success analysis could ever find out.
It isn't just if I got there that matters, it is if I got there in an
enjoyable way. I may put up w/ a lot of "headaches" for the experience
of getting there. MSNBC is an example of this. Their home page offers so
much more than a mere directory navigation structure that CNN has. It is
also completely above the fold, like CNN isn't and it can ONLY do this
effective limiting its navigation through "revelation" instead of
outright display. If I were to improve on this, I would do the NY Times
model of having an above the fold "Home Page" and a below the fold and
next to the fold navigation system.

Now, this being said, this is about navigation and not activation. When
designing an application I think it is much more difficult to do w/o
menus. In fact if I look at my desktop there isn't a single application
on it that doesn't use menus. Some don't rely on menus, but they then
use palettes w/ their own "revelations" at different points, such as
tabs, or fly-outs of other varieties. But "revelation" is the only way I
know of to manage complexity. I'm interested in anyone showing me other
examples.

Now what I saw at CHI was an interesting system that used two mice where
one was for manipulating the objects while the other was for the menuing
system which was not linerally based by circular so all items were the
same distance from the clickpoint on a right click. This is just a
possibly better variation on an already existing theme.

-- Dave

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
http://www.documentum.com/
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--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."