Documentation > Justifying the Design - page 1/3
Justifying The Design
The design of this interface has been performed according to a particular set of rules based on psychological theories such as working memory, or mental models.
Psychological Research Methods such as Hierarchical Task Analysis or questionnaires have also been applied in the firsts steps of the development. In addition use have been made of quick and dirty verbal protocol analysis during the evaluation phases.
The data collected through these different methods has been taken in account in the interface design, in correlation with the use of basic User Interfaces evaluation methods such as Nielsen's set of 10 Heuristics.
The Navigation Structure
As stated before, emphasis has been put on simplicity, to limit the amount of working memory required from the user to use the site. This can as well be achieved by taking in consideration what could be the user model of such a website, as well as trying to maximise the perceived affordance (See Norman, 1999) of the different navigation systems presented on the site.
This principle of simplicity has been applied to the navigation structure design as well, which has been performed in correlation with the page architecture presented earlier.
As information has to be reached as fast as possible, classical ways of navigation have been used, such as tab browsing, and classic left-side navigation bar. The two navigation systems are redundant, but the tabs are used as well to facilitate the user’s localisation within the site.
Information Architecture
The several subsections of the browse section have been designed relatively to the results of the questionnaire that has been created in support of the design process. Once again, a small number of parameters have been chosen to keep the design simple and therefore easy to browse.
