Genevieve's Blog

Navigation and Interface Design

Yesterday, in my Design Perspectives class, we discussed navigation and
interface design. We looked at a number of websites, and microsoft.com was
an example. We noticed that most of the websites listed their links in the top
left hand corner of the webpage, and we could make conclusions about what
they thought was important based on the order in which they had their links.
Microsoft.com first listed their products, which were most important to them.
At the bottom of their list, they had "Learning Tools" and "Events and
Webcasts." These links are obviously the least important to them because
they were at the very bottom of their navigation. Because of this, I feel that
Microsoft was most interested in making money, not helping their customers.

In my Professional Writing class, we discussed our final projects. Our
class presentation must be tight because companies will not always have
much time to sit and listen to a campaign. We must provide a quick
history, discuss the technology, and explain how the new technology or
software will help the users. I realized that, in order to make our
presentation, we must decide what information is most important to us. It
is like making the navigation for a website. We must organize our
information according to what we most want the audience to hear and
understand. The paper that we hand in will be more detailed, but our
multimedia presentation must be a very condensed version of the material
that we feel is most beneficial to our campaign. 

I feel that understanding navigation and interface design of websites will
help me design any multimedia presentation. It has given me an idea of
what users and audience members value most, and it has showed me how the
designers can help to determine what pages their users and audience view
and what information they hear. Designers can have much influence, but
they must know how to use their skills to their advantage. 

posted by Genevieve @ 1:24 PM