Internet product Interaction Design: To ensure that users do not get lost in the site

Article Description: Interactive Design Practical Guide Series (7) – Avoid getting lost.

Any location can be clear "where am I?" What's in here? Where can I go from here? ”

It's not a fun thing to get lost, just imagine how confused, frustrated, angry and fearful you would be when you were driving to the highway fork, but you couldn't see any signs. In order to avoid disorientation, we invented a variety of navigation tools, large to the satellite positioning system, small to the compass, human beings in this matter, highly innovative.

Lost in the Web site, although not a matter of life-and-death, but will bring a lot of negative effects, such as: User experience drops, tasks can not be completed, user churn and so on. We can avoid this by using a good navigation system. A good navigation system can help people find their place in the site and help them develop better query strategies to improve their understanding of the content.

Before you make a solution, understand why they get lost:

1, when people can not understand the information, will create confusion

2, people lost in the query process, do not know what to do next

3, people may lose the sense of direction in the website, can not go back to the previous page, or even home

Figure 1

For example, walking through this site in Figure 1, you are prone to a dilemma. Above, two clicks on the open page, there is no navigation information, not even any exit from the current page.

4, people in the information system deviated from the direction, distracted. People deviate from the main task because of the numerous and distracting information. In this regard, you can refer to the interactive guide, "highlighting the focus, at a glance."

Figure 2

Figure 2 of the login page, can be described as dazzling, the rich degree of information is not inferior to the home page, the designer's goal is to want users to give up the main task of login, to the "more important" place?

You might think that it's not very easy to keep users from getting lost, I just put the global navigation in all the pages so they can move between the core content of the site. Then put the crumbs, let them know where they are, and everything will be Bob.

But is it actually true? Global navigation may help users understand the core content of your site, but in specific tasks, such as Figure 3 Taobao Global navigation, if placed in the selection of goods or payment of the page, I am afraid not only can not guide users, but also interfere with the completion of the task.

Figure 3

Be careful not to get caught up in the excessive design of the navigation system. What we need to do is to use personas and scenes as a reference to determine the best route to the content that the persona chooses, not to provide all the lines, and not to copy the entire structure of the site to each page, resulting in a burden of page information. A good navigation system makes people feel less aware of its existence. As if watching sports, the referee will make a lot of correct judgments, and we often ignore his existence, but once the referee made a wrong verdict, will attract the audience on the scene of a sigh.

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