[Sigia-l] Research about closeness of content and navigation?

[Todd R.Warfel]

On Mar 21, 2004, at 7:04 AM, Marius van Dam wrote:

> My question is if people know of some relevant texts on the following 
> topics:
> -  research which deals with users preference of either a separation 
> of content and navigation or a convergence of the two.

Not sure if I understand the question properly or not, but I'll give an 
example of something that might relate...

Last year, we finished up a few educational/scientific sites and 
applications that utilized a mix of standard navigation (e.g. top, 
margin area) and navigation that was embedded in the body of the text. 
We tested this pretty extensively and found that roughly 50% of users 
used the standard navigation for wayfinding and 50% used the embedded. 
There didn't seem to be any specific pattern in the demographic (e.g. 
women vs. men, adults vs. teens, education level). So, we'd like to do 
some more research on it. We do have our theories as to why they chose 
one over the other, but again, we'll need some more research first.

We did notice particular trends, like those who used the embedded 
navigation tended to not notice the local navigation (e.g. in the 
margins). Also, those who used the embedded navigation didn't use the 
browser's back button to navigate back, they tended to use the built in 
"back" button.

But in our experience and research, both are beneficial.

> -  the concept of coherence and how it relates to web pages linked 
> together. (if this makes sense: I'm trying to find out all the ways in 
> which (the content of) the nodes that build up an experience for the 
> user are connected, but especially those that reside in written words)

Could you explain this a bit more?

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
User Experience Architect
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
--------------------------------------
Contact Info
voice: 	(607) 339-9640
email: 	twarfel at messagefirst.com
web: 	www.messagefirst.com
aim: 	twarfel at mac.com
--------------------------------------
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
User Experience Architect
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
--------------------------------------
Contact Info
voice: 	(607) 339-9640
email: 	twarfel at messagefirst.com
web: 	www.messagefirst.com
aim: 	twarfel at mac.com
--------------------------------------
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they are not.