Ch. 2

- The way you design the orginization of your site allows your audience to understand what they can excpect to find, and an overall picture of your site's main point.
- Categories make finding information easier, divide info into smaller sections, emphasize similarities, point out differences, and provide paths of information.
- It may be good to not use organization some times, therefore while customers are sorting through information they may come across other interesting information.
- Dividing information into portions can help the user get the answers needed with out having to go through large amounts of information.
- Labels can be based on topics, user tasks, a sitewide metaphor, specific audiences, or a linear sequence. The most self explanitory labels are the ones used in most web site (Jobs, Products, About Us...).
- You need to keep your site consistent with itself, and you also need to consider the rest of the web. Users transfer their knowledge of the web from one site to another.
- The most important navigation elements are the site identifier, orginizational catigories, contact info, and global utilities. These elements should be shown on every page to provide consistency.
- In order to save space on a website, a drop down menu could be used for navigation. This keeps info and nav hidden until being used.
- Breadcrumbs show the path from the home page to your current location.
- Unique images can be used to make websites unique, these are called web marks. They can serve as visual cues that can let you know if your on the right track.