website design - How to display nested categories of data without using nested menus

I've been put in charge of making a simple website. I'm also new to front-end web design and just design in general (I've always been a back-end programmer).

I was given a document by my superior that I should follow as to how certain data is to be structured and how they want the main navigation/basic look of the site to be. Here is a screenshot of it:

I think it's important to note that the maximum depth of categories is bounded. We've settled on a max of 3 levels deep (so what is shown in both pictures is the deepest the categories will go).

tl;dr version: Is there a well-regarded UI design pattern I should follow that would best mirror the structure in the first picture?

My first attempt at a site was not well received. I used nested menus in a navigation bar at the top. The last menu item in a category when clicked would open up a set of accordions for each query to be displayed. The menu was universally disliked and so were the accordions to an extent. This is what the menus looked like:

Below the menus you can see the accordions with the top one open.

I started doing my own research on UI/UX design and read that nested menus are considered poor design (and even removed from Bootstrap 3). I've been researching interface design techniques as well. But so far I have not been able to come up with anything that was able to mirror the structure of the first picture as well as nested menus. I guess I'm not very good at designing things (I can't draw very well either! :)

My question: What is a good way that does not use nested drop-down menus to display the data structured and shown in the first picture on a website?

If not a specific technique or html component, then is there a good reference I can check out that would help me out?

Thanks in advance.

Answer

The main problem with nested menus is that as UI objects they are somewhat feeble. Their task is to appear for a short period of time and disappear once user made a selection. From this perspective, asking user to select multilayered menus is an awful task as menus tend to disappear on a wrong move of the mouse.

I think a better option is to make nested menus more static. For instance, user can select first level category from the menu, like presented in your mockup. This opens a page where you can provide further navigation to other topics with a tree-like structure or with drill-down links and breadcrumbs. If there are data for parent topics, you can display it in the middle of the page and navigation at the left. Something like that:

tools - Web-based workflow solutions for graphic designers (hosted and self-run)?

There are some common tasks in almost every graphic designer's workflow that are made immensely easy by the Internet, but are often clumsy to handle through traditional channels like E-Mail.

Therefore, my question is: Does anybody know good web applications that serve the graphic designer's workflow? Installable or hosted doesn't matter, it would be interesting to know about both worlds.

Workflow management:

• Sending sketches to clients without clogging inboxes and sending dozens of cc's


• Gathering and documenting the client's feedback to the sketches

Asset management:

• Archiving and labeling finished work


• Archiving and labeling common design elements


• Archiving and labeling third-party work used (Stock images, fonts) and their license agreements


• Optionally: Making all this stuff available to the client through a secure login

I have, for example, used WordPress blogs to interact with clients in the past - every sketch being a blog post, and clients giving their feedback in comments. That is a fairly limited method, though - it would be nice to learn about more specialized products.

What are some good products that provide a solution for all or part of these tasks?

I know there are full-blown agency solutions for every imaginable budget, but I'm more interested in the lower price range and Open Source solutions.

Price sliders vs. range links as a faceted search form element for filtering on price

When comparing a front-end jquery slider widget against a list of links that filter by price range, within the context of faceted searches that reduce the number of items in a catalogue, which of the two aforementioned interface elements is best when considering the speed at which a user can restrict the catalogue products to the range that represents the amount they want to spend?

Answer

Slider has more cognitive load for a user. Also interaction implementation using slider could lead to some time losses.

In a scenario when user keep in mind the intended price range for a product, possible issues are:

1. User should constantly map the intended number and slider position. Even if the intended number is displayed in the slider, some users still will no just click but will slide there. The need of constant feedback loop leads to high cognitive load.


2. Take into account space requirements for usable slider.



3. Lack of visibility
   


4. Immediate content loading on slider change will lead to content flickering and network load. So it's better to convince if the slider position is final. Add this waiting time to resources' loading time. So it could be time-critical for a user.

Having the set of price ranges as hyperlinks, user interaction consists of just two steps:

1. Recognize needed link.


2. Click it.

path - Illustrator: Is there an efficient and accurate way to join two circles by their tangents (and keep it editable)?

It's easy to join two circles if they are the same size and horizontal/vertical, into a pill shape:

If the circles are at an add angle then it's still possible but you can no longer rely on smart guides.

You can add lines roughly where the tangents should be and then use the scissors tool on the circles, cut out the inner area and then join the two crescents into one shape.

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a way to do this that is still editable afterwards too?

There are some other questions that cover the same area as this but don't cover editability or joining circles that are not in line with each other (where smart guides can't help).

Answer

After experimenting, I found two decent methods.

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You can make a path with a thick, round cap/join stroke. If the two circles are the same size then you can Object > Expand... and this will sufficient.

If you want each end to have a circle of a different size then you can then use the stroke width tool (Shift+W) to adjust each end. This works okay and remains editable, but doesn't always give perfect results... Especially if you start doing more complicated shapes with corners. See the following gif for an example:

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Alternatively you can use the Blend options between the two circles. This will best be explained through a few screen shots:

Here are two circles.

With both circles selected Blend them with Object > Blend > Make.

You can adjust the blend with Object > Blend > Blend Options. Select 'Specified Steps' in the 'Spacing' drop down and enter a value of between 50 and 200. Higher than this may start to slow down your system if there are a lot of blends in your file, low values may affect the final result.

The individual circles can be moved (I've now changed the outlined circles to filled circles) and the blend will follow.

At this point... The blend is still editable and the result is good as a draft. However, as in my case, there is actually 100 circles making up this shape, I may want to simplify this shape once I am happy with it, or as I am finalising artwork. To do this, first Object > Expand.

You can then open the pathfinder tool and merge all of the resulting circles with the 'unite' option.

If you want to further refine the edges between the two original circles then you can delete all of the path anchors between the tangential anchors...

And re-join them with the pen tool.

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This should create almost perfect tangent joins between the two circles. You can also do corners with the blend tool, more complex shapes with multiple circles, or even colour blends. I like this method for when accuracy is needed to make great logos or pictograms. The stroke width tool certainly is quicker and has it's place however.

Please see CAI's answer below for scripts that work very well for making tangents connect perfectly.

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physical - Why do Microwave oven UIs fail?

I’m not a professional chef, but I do know my way around the kitchen and its machines. The dishwasher, the fridge, the freezer, the stove and the oven all works as expected in many homes. Could you start the dishwasher, my friends might say, but they never say – heat this in the microwave oven. Probably it’s because they are programmable these days, and have plenty of buttons with arbitrary non-standard, non-conventional icons and no explanatory text to help. Fortunately there is a trend among microwave oven manufacturers to add a panic-button at the lower left of the control panel. It’s the button that starts the microwave oven at max effect and runs for 30 seconds.

But I wonder why that is. All other kitchen machines could be operated fairly well if you give it a little time, but the microwave just doesn’t. There can’t be different designers, but maybe more options where microwave oven UI designers had to invent new symbols for new features and add a note in the manual?

Micah Wittman has even made an effort to start a “Microwave Oven UI Standard Project” to overcome this problem. I’d be happy to join if it is still running. So far this is his suggestion:

Still one wonders, why do Microwave UI fail?

Answer

One UI is analogic, the other (the failing one) is digital, that is, the appliance is a microwave-computer mongrel.
Alan Cooper, in his book "The inmates are running the asylum", teaches us that when you mix a computer with anything else, you always get a computer no matter what the anything else was.
Thus, mixing an oven with a computer, the outcome is a computer.
If you don't happen to have the Inmates book, you can read the chapter online opening the Amazon link above and following the Look inside the book link. After scrolling a lot the chapter is available, it's a highly recommended reading, somehow humorous, enlightening.

Then, back to the reasoning that tends to answer the question, IMO there are two main issues:

The first issue is that digital controls are less intuitive than analog controls. For example when you operate your mother's microwave, even for the first time, you know that turning the knobs clockwise you set a higher power level or a longer time. This is not so with the digital UI.

The other issue, an important one, is feature creep. The designers (usually engineers) try to give us more, because it's rather inexpensive, so they can solve us problems that we don't actually have.

Consider a digital UI made up of two button pairs, one pair to control power and the other to control time.
The effect of the buttons appears in a display, changing the power level gauge or the displayed time.
The UI completes with a [start] and a [stop/reset] button.
A digital UI such as this would be perfectly usable, even for everybody's grandmother (given that the labels are printed in a suitable font size).
This UI is usable by anyone because such an UI is aligned with the user's mental model.

Because, ultimately, the usable UI is the one that's aligned with the user's mental model (this concept is explained in another book by Alan Cooper, "About Face").

And an anecdotal story. I work for a software development factory, in locations populated by hundreds of people in their twenties, mostly of the nerd type.

At lunch time they avoid those microwaves of the digital type. Some kids really loathe them. The analog ones have a greater audience.

genre - Is my serial-killer novel horror or crime?

I'm writing a novel which centers around a serial killer and his victims. I'm having a lot of trouble deciding whether it belongs in the horror genre (it's a disturbing, horrific slasher, and a lot of the book works on horror and dread) or in crime (because a lot is about the good guys' hunt for the killer, and also there's no supernatural element).

I've read other fiction which seems similarly borderline to me (Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, J.A. Konrath's first Jack Daniels book, and others), and on Amazon I indeed see these books listed in both categories. But I find it's important to have a single primary tag to focus on - for my elevator pitch, for query letters, for general promotion.

How can I tell which genre is better for my particular book? And, once I decide on one or the other as my 'main' genre, is there anything I need to do to fit better into the genre I've chosen, and make the book less borderline?

Answer

Which is the primary focus of your story: the villain, or the investigation? Is the investigation a tool to learn more about the villain, or is the cunning villain a means to complicate the investigation? Is the duel between the investigator and the criminal the focus, or is it just means to display the twisted mind of the criminal in all gory glory?

Answer that, and you'll know how to classify your story.

methodology - What other UX processes exist other than user centered design?

What other well known processes or approaches for creating an user experience (such as an app or website) exist except the user centered design approach and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

Answer

If you looking for different processes rather than methods, there are

Four of them did I examine for innovation capabilites in a past thread (UCD and innovation):

So, one could say UCD is more an engineer attitude - problem found, problem solved. And in an engineers' attitude, all decision are traceable back to a requirement.

And Design Thinking is a designers' attitude - problem seen, play around, solution found. The ideation phase isn't really traceable, so the solution is a bit arbitrary.

LeanUx is out of a startup-mind - solution proposed, solution tested, solution refined. The emphasis lies on a fast product launch and gradual advancements.

Finally, Data Driven Design comes from a marketing perspective - set up business goal, test refinements, take best measured. It is not aiming for innovation, but optimization.