I’ve seen some bad ideas in navigation, but this subtle one takes the cake (a nice German Chocolate cake).
Typically when you see navigation, you see a list of links. Click on the link, you go to the next page.
Wrong.
On this particular site (nameless), which was recently redesigned (and nicely by the way), someone came up with the idea of making the site visitor click a button after selecting a link to follow. Mind you, the tooltip tells them to click the button to continue.
Where would you enter the restroom?
On a recent shopping mall outing, my wife and I paid a visit to an upscale department store, just to use the facilities (of course). While waiting for my wife, I observed a major user experience flaw. What made it so amazing is the this upscale retailer prides itself on its presentation. As men and women entered the restroom lounge area, over 70% of them appeared confused as to the location of “their” restroom. Several men were seen entering the women’s restroom in error. Not to be outdone, women were seen stepping into maintenance closets and service areas. Yet there were signs marking each restroom by gender. So why the confusion? Hadn’t the retailer done enough?
I previously wrote about an experience where a restaurant forced me to visit their website for their menu, only to discover that their website (including their menu) were in Flash.
Recently, I again had the need to lookup a restaurants menu online, via a mobile device. This time, the menu was in PDF format, making me traverse virtual hoops to see what the restaurant offered. Why do restaurants make it so hard to obtain information?
I recently had a bad experience at a local restaurant. So what does that have to do with web design?
My wife & I were told to view the carryout menu online. As we were physically at the restaurant, we attempted to view the menu on the restaurant’s website from our smart phones. That failed, due to the site being created solely in Flash.