[Sigia-l] Intranet Navigation Criteria

Fri Feb 17 13:34:02 EST 2006

Hello everyone I am doing some research on intranet navigation criteria.

Specifically I'm trying to learn about how companies develop a criteria
for optimizing links on a global nav - for instance by usage - clicks by
user audiences by week or even tying navigation to an importance or
criticality rating
Of course the desired result is a criteria that helps the owner of a
navigation system ensure that the links posted are the most critical to
large audiences

Has anyone dealt with these issues in the past? Can anyone point me to
an interesting white paper or site?

 Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated

Thanks for reading!

Richard Svinkin
Solution Architect
svinkin at hp.com

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Today's Topics:

   1. labeling conundrum (Samantha Bailey)
   2. Re: labeling conundrum (Listera)
   3. Re: labeling conundrum (andrew at friendlymanual.com)
   4. Re: labeling conundrum (Listera)
   5. Re: labeling conundrum (Lyle Kantrovich)
   6. Re: Re: [iai-members] Sites that remember what you look	ed at
      (Francois Jordaan)
   7. Re: Re: [iai-members] Sites that remember what you look ed
at
      (Davezilla)
   8. RE: labeling conundrum (Stewart Dean)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:23:44 -0600
From: Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com>
Subject: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
	<10699a510602161423g588aa6a9j518dac05953a7f35 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hi,

An interesting issue has cropped up for me and I'm hoping to get some
quick finger-to-the-wind feedback. We have been working on a new "global
navigation bar" or "page header" for our web-based product--aka the top
2 inches of the screen where the primary navigation links live and are
consistently presented throughout the site. We have been calling this
project the Global Navigation Bar Refresh internally. I didn't think I
was going to need to have a name/label for it externally, so I haven't
given it much thought.
However, it turns out that we have PRINT documentation (and it $ound$
like there's a lot of it) that has been referring to that area of the
page as the "toolbar" for years (aka; since the product was actual
shrink wrapped software & where toolbar probably was the precisely right
terminology).  Our marketing folks are creating a flash demo and in the
process of trying to decide what to call this they stumbled onto the
documentation issue. The documentation people feel very strongly that
the flash demo needs to call this part of the page the "toolbar" to
correspond to the documentation.

I'm very reluctant to call this a toolbar as I think that "toolbar" is
widely recognized as a widget or collection of functions that can be
added/removed to an application and that enable some kind of
functionality, whereas the navigation bar or menu at the top of the
screen allows you to move throughout the site. I think the dominance of
Google & the Google toolbar at this moment in time further exacerbates
the situation. (Additionally, our competitor has just launched a toolbar
of their own...) However, doing some searching and poking around it's
clear that web designers refer to the collection of links that lets you
move around the site as navigation bars or navigation menus, but I'm not
really sure about the average user. I know that in usability tests I
very rarely hear a user say "navigation" anything--they usually just
point, call them links or menus. I don't want to make a big stink and
have the company spend a lot of money printing new documentation if this
is a non-important issue--i.e., does it really matter if our
documentation calls the top of the screen a toolbar? It's hard for me to
imagine a scenario in which the users would experience mass confusion
(and we'd just be talking about users who actually use documentation),
so it doesn't seem like a big danger.

But the semantically precise part of me is tied up in knots.

What say you?

Samantha

--
Samantha Bailey | samantha at baileysorts.com | http://baileysorts.com

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:38:03 -0500
From: Listera <listera at rcn.com>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <C01A770B.14D0C%listera at rcn.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

Samantha Bailey:

> But the semantically precise part of me is tied up in knots.

> What say you?

Semantically precise part of you is tied up in knots? :-)

Generally speaking consistency trumps most other concerns, including
originality.

----
Ziya

"Do first things first, and second things not at all."

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 17:57:31 -0600
From: andrew at friendlymanual.com
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <1140134251.43f5116ba1231 at webmail.friendlymanual.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Quoting Listera <listera at rcn.com>:

> Generally speaking consistency trumps most other concerns, including 
> originality.

That said, eventually even the most staid of documentation cells will
need to reposition their vision such that they can see the light :)

Cheers, Andrew

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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:47:06 -0500
From: Listera <listera at rcn.com>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <C01A873A.14D12%listera at rcn.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

andrew at friendlymanual.com:

> That said, eventually even the most staid of documentation cells will 
> need to reposition their vision such that they can see the light :)

You mean consistently? :-)

----
Ziya

"Innovate as a last resort."

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 23:56:14 -0600
From: Lyle Kantrovich <lyle.kantrovich at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com>
Cc: SIGIA-L <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
	<cf06888a0602162156n1740d7e2ya82ed140108f3ccb at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Samantha,

As long as this "label" doesn't actually get exposed in the UI, but only
in the docs and flash "demo", is there really a big risk here? 
If YOU didn't know it was covered in documentation, what's the
likelihood that users actually use the docs (e.g. I'm assuming you've
been running U-tests without docs available).  The only users that will
see the "label" are those that use the docs and view the demo. 
Also, as long as the docs and demo actually explain clearly what they
mean when they say "toolbar", the users of the docs and demo should
understand well enough.  Users who don't use the docs or demo will call
it something more semantically perfect --- e.g. "that blue area up
there."  ;-)

But if you want to burn some $$ and political capital, you should fight
for a label test and make them change everything to the "perfect" label.
There's likely no real business return on it, but it might save a few
users a few mental gyrations (this likely isn't something that'd spur a
support call)...even though they'll not pay any more for the product.

The semantically precise part of me yearns for the label test.  The
pragmatist in me says to look for some bigger fish to fry.

On 2/16/06, Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com> wrote:
> But the semantically precise part of me is tied up in knots.

--
Lyle

--------------------------
Lyle Kantrovich
Blog: Croc O' Lyle
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com

Usability Professionals' Association
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 10:32:42 -0000
From: Francois Jordaan <Francois.Jordaan at wheel.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Re: [iai-members] Sites that remember what you
	look	ed at
To: "'sigia-l at asis.org'" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID: <DB5599985CAE3C4B82D1A47B8DEA8D8201E9CE37 at virgo.wheel.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="windows-1252"

I really like the way www.gifts.com handles "visited items". Makes it
looks like tags you've put into a catalogue.

Most sites with this functionality always give the impression that it's
only included because it came with the CMS, and it's lumped as an
afterthought into the navigation in the default style.

f

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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 06:28:25 -0500
From: Davezilla <davezilla at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Re: [iai-members] Sites that remember what you
	look ed	at
To: "Francois Jordaan" <Francois.Jordaan at wheel.co.uk>
Cc: "sigia-l at asis.org" <sigia-l at asis.org>
Message-ID:
	<774cfb570602170328k35f67cf5hd623e10d2cafe901 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 2/17/06, Francois Jordaan <Francois.Jordaan at wheel.co.uk> wrote:

> I really like the way www.gifts.com handles "visited items". Makes it 
> looks like tags you've put into a catalogue.

That is really slick. I like the categories they have in the flyout nav.
Very friendly.

--
Color me gone,
Davezilla
http://davezilla.com/

------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:34:43 +0000
From: "Stewart Dean" <stew8dean at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] labeling conundrum
To: samantha at baileysorts.com, sigia-l at asis.org
Message-ID: <BAY114-F35F3CC68868A901129B88CECF80 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed

>From: Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com>

About what to call the main navigation strip of a website....

>However, doing some searching and poking around it's clear that web 
>designers refer to the collection of links that lets you move around 
>the site as navigation bars or navigation menus, but I'm not really 
>sure about the average user. I know that in usability tests I very 
>rarely hear a user say "navigation" anything--they usually just point, 
>call them links or menus. I don't want to make a big stink and have the

>company spend a lot of money printing new documentation if this is a 
>non-important issue--i.e., does it really matter if our documentation 
>calls the top of the screen a toolbar?

I don't think there is a standard wording. Why not just use a diagram
and 
use something like 'top menu bar'  or 'top link bar'   -   describes
where 
it is, what it does and what shape it is.

Providing what ever name you feel best (and you have experience based
upon your user testing) is somehow indicated rather than assuming.  So
that's my suggestion - use pictures.

Stew Dean

------------------------------

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