[Sigia-l] Functional Decoration: visual cues for wayfinding

[Lispi, Tess A]

Paolo,
In my mind it would be a combination of all of them, I don't think you can separate them out and say that all individuals will key in on color first, etc. It is all of them, colour, size, position, icon and it depends on the person (their background, culture, etc.), their current mindset (panic, rushed, etc.) what language they speak (or don't speak), etc. 

Take a trip to an airport or trains station that you are unfamiliar with. Pay attention to your experience and how others are experiencing it. People watch. :) Take notes. That exercise may help.

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Paola Kathuria
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2013 9:02 AM
To: SIG Information Architecture
Subject: [Sigia-l] Functional Decoration: visual cues for wayfinding

Hello,

I'm looking for pointers to research to support the following theory, or a lively discussion if anyone disagrees. :-)

I'm taking wayfinding to include:

- where am I?
- what else is here?
- am I in the same place I was before?
- how do I get back to...?

Visual cues in primary navigation includes:

- the label text (e.g., "About us", "Our services", "R&D", "Contact us")
- the size of the label (e.g., the short one, the long one)
- the position (e.g., first, third, last)
- the icon (meaningful or abstract) (e.g., a face, a wrench)
- the colour (e.g., green for "About us", red for "Our services", blue for "R&D")

When designing the IA for web sites, I consider all of these in the primary navigation so that primary navigation links are colour- and icon-coded (the icon is a back-up for colour-blind people).

I apply the colour and icon to the style of menu tabs, tints, borders, bullets and headings. I call this Functional Decoration. The theory is that these visual cues are recognised at different rates, in fact I propose in ascending order of the earlier list.

Here's an example scenario:

1) a new visitor enters a site by, let's say, the home page

2) the site is new to them - I suggest that they are most likely to read the primary navigation menus

3) they click on one of the tabs (which are all colour- and icon-coded) and end up on a content page with more use of the same colour and icon that were in the tab

4) they follow a link in the body text and end up in the Research & Development section which has a different colour and icon - these visual cues are subtle hints to the visitor that they're no longer reading about Services

5) the visitor wants to go back to read about a specific service from a few pages earlier.

The question is, what's the strongest visual cue to tell them which primary navigation tab to click?

1) the label text
2) the size of the label
3) the position of the label
4) the icon
5) the colour

I'd argue that colour is recognised first. On a frequently-visited site, I think that the actual text of a menu label becomes less and less important as other visual cues are quicker.

To help see what I'm talking about, here are some example sites (mine + case studies with screenshots):

- http://www.paolability.com/
- http://www.limov.com/projects/millennium-experience.lml (1997)
- http://www.limov.com/projects/barclays-bank-barclaynet.lml (1996)
- http://www.limov.com/projects/crash-homelessness-charity.lml (2000)
- http://www.limov.com/projects/one-world-telecom.lml (2000)
- http://www.limov.com/projects/silverplatter-health-and-safety-publishing.lml (1999)

I'd love to know what your own practice is in this area and what you think about my theory.


Paola
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http://www.paolability.com/
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