Ease of Use / UI Question
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- cinder
Here's a Ease of use UI type question . . .
Say I have an html menu like so:
Main1
Bob
Steve
Gary
Main2
Mike
George
Gary(only one would be open at a time. You click Main1, and it opens. You click Main2 and it opens. Each click would go to a new html page, it's not flash or dhtml or anything)
Someone wants to find Gary
Gary ACTUALLY resides under main1, but his alias is also under main2 because someone might want to look for him there.Do you think it's too confusing to click the Main2> Gary link and have it plop you back at Main1> Gary?
Or should there be page at Main2> Gary that says "Gary is actually here, please click to go there"
This isn't a temporary thing - this is a permanent thing.
My boss argues that shooting a user to another section when they thought they were in one section would be confusing. (nevermind the fact that we were being nice to them and letting them find the link they were looking for in the 'wrong' place)
Personally, I would think that they wouldn't care because they were just looking for Gary.
I'm just trying to get some more 'informed' opinions on this.
- corin0
I think you're boss has a good point, but i think the real issue is why gary lies in two sections, i don't think you can really say that you are doing anyone a favour by putting him in twice, obviously i don't know the full story but it sounds like poor structure. Your boss is right to worry about users getting confused, your don't do users favours, they are clients u do your job (this is not a bitch, but to use 'the fact that we were being nice to them' as justification for interface desicisions is quite a flawed argument in my opinion). So bascially i think that you're wrong and that gary shouldn't be in two places (unless it is made gratutiously clear that this is what is happening (there could be two garys so just saying his name twice doesn't mean ppl will expect the same result). If users click in the second gary place first and then get sent to the first gary section they might assume that said system is behaving erratically or doesn't work and possibly won't make the effort to search for gary at all, or anything else for that matter. Poor gary....
we're talking about gary coleman right?
- the_user0
Large e-commerce sites often (almost always) place products under multiple categories that act as the IA for the site. Often individual products naturally fall under multiple categories (the names of which are almost inevitable driven by marketing rather than usability). This is not a problem on a large scale site (in my opinion) as long as navigational aids are dynamic depending on where the piece of content is loaded (breadcrumbs, contextual marketing content ,etc.).