Friday, August 25, 2017

information architecture - Including unique content under multiple navigation trees


I have a navigation based on categories and certain pages appear under the same categories. That means they appear twice under two different menus. Does anyone see a particular problem with this, usability-wise?



Answer



I am a big fan of this. Redundancy in this case is good; it doubles the chances of the user getting their work done.


Basically, you want to go to some lengths to make sure users know that it's the same item in those two (or more) spots. You might even give the user cross-wise breadcrumbs ("also found under XXX"), though a simple list of categories at the top of the entry (like here on StackExchange) can suffice.


Another concern is if users need to know the status of an item--for example whether they've visited that page--and the status shows up as different in the two places it appears. This can happen due to incorrect design (e.g. if symlink directories on disk, the same page can have two distinct URLs) and is quite confusing.


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