Web Works: Navigation

Navigation is fundamental to the Web’s dynamic, and more so than ever. With the explosive growth of e-commerce and escalating competition for audiences, how vistors interact with a website, and how well they find their way around, constitutes a critical aspect of the design mission. Because websites provide few of the graphical and textual clues that users have come to take for granted in existing printed information, designers need to learn new navigation strategies and in some cases unlearn old ones. Sites that reward visitors with ease-of-use and instant gratification will succeed. Sites that frustrate users and send them will fail. New rules and new solutions are urgently needed.

WebWorks: Navigation features some 35 projects by many of the leading interactive agencies worldwide, as well as by Web design studios large and small. These cases studies were selected because they best exemplify the latest creative thinking about navigation on the Web. Both designers and people in Internet business will benefit from these accounts.

Ken Coupland writes about art, architecture, photography, and graphic design for an international roster of publications, with a focus on the digital revolution. A contributing editor for and regular contributor to Graphis magazine and Graphis Books, he has also written for Adweek, Critique, Elle Décor, Eye Forbes, HOW, ID, Print, Sunset, and Wired. He has written and designed various Web-based works of fiction, wrote and edited Graphis Web Design Now 1, and has curated several exhibitions devoted to digital art and design.