Navigation, not the same old story

By Kursat Ozenc

Navigation in software products usually has two meanings: one being 'to move around software’s mental space', and the other 'to get around spatially-based software’s two or three dimensional world'. Navigation in mental space means easy access to architectural pathways such as menus, functions, etc., whereas the latter means traveling in a spatial ‘world-like’ or virtual representation. In this article, I will focus on navigation in a 2 or 3 dimensional space and sketch out the main paradigms shaping today’s navigation design.

Reflecting on state-of-the-art frameworks, products, and applications, one can discover four influencers in current navigation design efforts:

1. Gamification: ‘Gamification’ means providing a game-like experience in other domains. In 3D modeling software, this means adapting navigation tools from the game domain to enhance the user experience. Most games offer a spatial journey to their users, which usually requires extensive navigation controls, whether it be a 1^st person or 3^rd person game. The advantage of gamification is the playful, engaging experiences it can provide; the disadvantage is the potential for misuse of gaming metaphors without proper justification.  
   
   
2. Reverse Webification: ‘Webification’ refers to the simplification of a software feature to make it suitable for a web context. However, in recent years, with the ubiquity of map applications over web and mobile, software designers are looking at these simpler navigation controls for inspiration or adaptation. An advantage of reverse webification is ease of use, but with the risk of oversimplification of tasks that need a more complex interactive behavior.
   
   
3. Disruptive technologies (Mobile, Gestures, and sensors) Disruptive technologies have had a tremendous effect on navigation design. With the widespread use of tablets, touch and location-aware interfaces, navigation design gained new traction towards its long-awaited promise of augmented reality, or ‘immersive’ experience. Tablet/mobile apps now give users built-in navigation metaphors. Think of an iPad with a motion sensor, or a mobile app using image recognition software. In both, navigation design becomes more like real life (and therefore intuitive) rather than virtual and metaphorical. This provides both advantages and challenges for designers. One advantage is the ability to create simple, powerful interactions that don’t tax the mental and financial bandwidth of your user. For example, imagine an augmented reality app that uses motion and image recognition technologies with very little user input or guidance required. One disadvantage is the ’halo effect‘ of these disruptive technologies, which can lead to over-expectation from your users.  For example, they might ask for a holographic navigation control because they have seen that technology in a recent Hollywood movie.
   
   
4. Felt-life experience & Metaphors Designers always face the paradox of creating new solutions while maintaining old conventions. Along these lines, felt-life experience plays an important role in defining the amount of novelty required. Felt-life experience means two things. First, the user’s built-in capabilities and their perception of affordances, in the context of navigation. This means up and down, left and right perceptions, which are also called direction metaphors. Felt-life experience also means the sum of all the user’s experiences with other products available to them. The advantage of felt-life experience is the designer’s ability to be one of their own users, and empathize with them through research and role-playing. The disadvantage of too much reliance on felt-life experience would be a tendency to inflexibility where a novel behavior is needed.

What do these influencers mean for navigation design in the context of product development? Navigation is used in an array of domains including map-based products, 3d modeling and animation software, geographical positioning devices, and games. Given the richness of these domains, these influencers can help designers find creative navigation solutions for the creative arts, engineering, entertainment, and way-finding. The designer’s role in creating new ways of navigating is also constrained by other inside factors, such as legacy code inside a product, stakeholder expectations, industry standards, etc.  To effectively deliver a navigation design that can add value to a product, designers need to pay attention to these influencers in the design process. In a way, all these influencers are expectations from different stakeholders, and mainly from end users. In my next post, I will focus on users through the lens of their main influencers.