Don’t make me think
‘Don’t make me think’ is a book by Steve Krug, first published in October 2000. It is one of the most popular introductions to user interface design, with 600,000 copies published in 20 different languages. Now, after…
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Flaws in UX design standards: Hidden navigation
Experienced designers will likely agree that inspiration from other sources is not stealing when it comes to user interface design. It’s called “best practice research”. One phrase I reiterate when others…
Hamburger menus perform poorly
Why we banished the hamburger menu from our iPhone app The hamburger menu is one of the oldest icons in the history of graphical user interfaces. It was included in the Xerox Star, one of the first ever graphical user…
Complex navigation
Improving Gov.uk’s navigation This is an interesting article about changes to the navigation of Gov.uk. I was struck by the fact that Gov.uk has three different ‘content areas’: mainstream, specialist and whitehall.…
Why audience-based navigation does not necessarily work
‘Hey, you there’: the trouble with audience-based navigation Gov.uk shared something very interesting about their experience with audience-based labels in their webpages. They found that people do not always identify…
The perils of hiding navigation
Side drawer navigation could be costing you half your user engagement The side drawer navigation menu is similar in function to the hamburger menu, as used on the Study at St Andrews website. The side drawer /…
The usefulness of global navigation
Global navigation is less useful on large, complex websites Here is a thought-provoking article about global navigation. We made the decision to remove the University’s global navigation menu from the Study at St…
Replacing the Flash world map
One of the biggest issues we have had to tackle while working on the new Study at St Andrews website is the entrance requirements and country information section. The website contained a Flash world map that was…
Why less is more
User expertise stagnates at low levels When users learn how to use a website, they are doing just that – learning how to use it. This is why consistency is so important. Terminology, navigation menus and the general…
Keyword data, dangerous navigation, and cards
Lost for words: Google stops providing keywords A couple of weeks ago, I covered the news that Google Search was no longer passing on keyword data to analytics tools. This blog post from the Government Digital Service…