Another Use-it column argues that the most important things that people do on the web can be summarized with 3 C's:
Collecting information which will be...
Compared in order to make a...
Choice.
Narrative structure
linear < - - - - > non-linear
Linear sites have a strong story line, few hyperlinks to distract, and/or fairly strong clues (sometimes big buttons) to indicate the preferred path for you to tak through the site:
This Tutorial on web searches has an obvious path leading on to the next page at the end of each screen.
The title says it all: "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information" (G. Miller, Psychological Review, 63 no. 2 (1956) p 81.)
More than nine options in a list--any list, not only on the web--starts to get confusing. Conversely too few items on navigation lists leads to sites that have too many levels to navigate comfortably.
Grouping -- Which topics belong with each other? Break the topics down into groups with less than 9 (ideally less than 7) items in each group.
Labelling -- What is it that characterizes each group of topics?
Ordering -- What's most important? What's most popular? What do you most want to draw attention to?
Light redesign of the Merry Lea page site (links are bogus)
Learning from librarians
After Rosenfeld & Morville, Information Architecture (O'Reilly 1998)
Exact schemes
An exact information organization scheme, e.g. "alphabetical by last name":
is comprehensive, there's a place in the info scheme for every item of information.
The categories that are mutually exclusive. If my last name is "Yoder" I go under the Y's and not under the E's.
The categories are easy to create and maintain. If you order people's names by last name, you don't have to think a whole lot about where to place a person. The ordering of letters in the Roman alphabet is a given.
Exact schemes are easy to use if you know what you're looking for. It's easy to find a phone number for "Kauffman, Allan". This sort of scheme is also wonderful if you've got lots of information. You can make 10,000 names available in a phone directory, and the Magic Number Seven considerations don't come into play because folks familiar with English already know alphabetical ordering...it's not new.
Here are some examples of exact information organization schemes:
Like the "subject" headings in a library catalog, these take a lot more effort to come up with, are harder to define, keep from overlapping, and maintain. But, they're a whole lot more useful for people who don't know exactly what they're looking for, (or, at least don't know what it might be called on your website...)
Task oriented -- Like the commands on a word processor, these are actions to be accomplished, e.g. " Shop | Download | Contact us! " . See the MIT Sloan-- screen shot, May 2002 link below.
Metaphor-driven -- WebSiteGarage.com (screenshot) This whole company is a metaphor! An astounding number of sites use the Virtual Library metaphor. This promotional site for the Audi TT (screenshots: mouse clicked on mirror, on tires, May 2002) (Spain) uses the car itself as the organizing metaphor for the site. The Whitehouse (screenshot, May2002) originally organized links by it's own physical structure--e.g. go to the "East Wing" for info about the First Lady.
It's possible to use more than one scheme on the same page. If you do this, it's important to physically separate the different navigation schemes. That Sloan MIT (2002) did that. (What are they up to now?) See also, GC.
Even after you've put a lot of thought into devising, say, a useful set of categories for your information, the categories themselves must be displayed in some order. Two common choices are sorting alphabetically or by popularity. Yahoo sorts subject categories alphabetically, and then displays (in a smaller typeface) popular sublinks in each category.
