Wayfinding

Wayfinding is used to help the user navigate from one position to another, either tin the real world or the virtual world.

Good design lets the user know where they are, where they can go and the path or route to take to get there. For this principle I will discuss the Martin The Monkey website developed for the group assignment in Multimedia Design, Interdisciplinary practice.

The project was focused on the promotion of a toy that we developed as a group, in which I was responsible for the website design. Our toy had a back story that included six extra characters, and the website had to be dynamic and interactive for children rather than static for information.

To integrate these characters into the website the links to them were placed throughout the website as hotspots. When the child investigates the site ,which pans left or right depending on the position of the mouse, they find hints and signposts to their location.

One of the characters had a literal pathway to their location, as well as a rollover that hinted they where there. These hints then opened up further information on the individual characters in another part of the jungle world.

On reflection, one principal of wayfinding was missing, and that was the users ability to understand where they are, their location within this world. I had no form of breadcrumbs to show the user where they are and where they had been.

For the user to understand how they can travel to a destination can be easy in an interactive environment. For this project, navigation is performed with the mouse, so the use of rollover effects show the user that there are possible pathways to new information at aclick of the button.

For the user to remember how to interact with the project I used consistent navigation location. The main links to information are always across the top of the page, no matter where they are located as any link opens up an external SWF file within the page.

Overall I feel that the wayfinding within this project was successfully balanced between having very obviuos signs and signals and hiding links within the page to encourage investigation and interaction.