[Sigia-l] Isn't that horse dead yet? (was:"meta-"navigation and before that: global navigation meta navigation)

[Eric Scheid]

On 7/6/05 2:03 AM, "frank.shepard at att.net" <frank.shepard at att.net> wrote:

> It looks as though you've identified a regularity that obeys no principle of
> internal coherence but is instead characterized by its distinctive
> irregularity. The pattern reflects a certain heterogeneity at work within that
> set of elements that are conventionally deployed in web projects. Not all
> elements can be grouped into homogeneous fields, and not all groups will be
> homegeneous. In other words, these are the crumbs that are typically left-over
> after all the sorting is down. And that is their principle of regularity. As
> such, there will be no content-oriented label that can explain them. Why not
> just call it the dust-bin?

I'm not so sure there are no principles at work with this thing. One
principle we can commonly draw is that the links commonly relate to the site
as a whole, and not to the current page in any contextual way. Of course
there are exceptions possible in actual practice, just as there can
sometimes be weird and wacky members of the global navigation of a given
site.

Another principle at work is that the collection of links appear to be
considered by the site owner as (a) necessary (else why bother), but (b) of
much lesser importance (hence their position at the bottom of the page, and
their less prominent styling).

I'm also not so sure that "these are the crumbs that are typically left over
after all the sorting is done". I've seen users do card sort exercises who
quite happily create a pile for those particular links, and not as a pile
that they don't know what to do with. They often will have a pile of
miscellaneous bits and pieces which they have no idea what to do with, and
that pile is distinct from the other pile. They also often seem reluctant to
keep that un-sortable pile in a nice tidy pile - they'll do things like
leave them scattered in a zone instead.

e.