| a) a right-brain artistic panacea that is a revolutionary new concept; |
| b) 'hype' + something else; or |
| c) an evolutionary concept for increasing the accessibility and usefulness of on-line text. |
| If you guessed "c" then follow along. Constructing a hypertext (or hypermedia, performance support system, CBT, or enterprise application) requires engineering discipline. A favorite definition of engineering is: a science by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to human beings (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary). Even if a web site is for recreation, the author typically had a purpose and a goal in mind. Engineering, therefore, consists of meeting the goal by creating a usable site with respect to content, structure, semantic encoding, and wayfinding. |
| A usability report (10/21/96) entitled Usability Studies And Designing Navigational Aids For The World Wide Web (D. Bachiochi, M. Berstene, E. Chouinard, N. Conlan, M. Danchak, T. Furey, C. Neligon and D. Way, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA, and Aetna, Inc,. Hartford, CT 06156, USA) defines Wayfinding as providing human beings with the answers to four simple questions: |
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1. Where am I now? |
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2. Where do I want to go? |
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3. Am I on the right path? |
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4. Am I there yet? |
| The study concludes that the tools inherent to web browsers are not sufficient for effective wayfinding. They must be augmented with: |
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Logical structure design |
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A website home, labeled as such, on each page |
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Structure buttons (Table of Contents, site Map, Index) |
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Structure buttons and the website home fixed at the top beneath the browser directory buttons. Current results indicate that textual representation may be better than iconic. |