We are always try to "find our way"—when we travel, when we work, when we read. Life is a journey, and navigation is an important part of every element of that journey. But what is navigation and how do you apply that to information design?
Navigating through the Pearl Harbor Ship Channel
When I was a teenager, my family lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, and a family friend (Dale) invited me one day to go sailing with him and his son. We rented a small sailboat, and we met at the marina at Hickam Air Force Base to take the sailboat out through the mouth of the marina—between the flightline (which ran out into the ocean) and the entrance to Pearl Harbor ship channel—and then out into the Pacific Ocean.As we began to sail out of the marina, Dale pointed out the buoys that were floating nearby and explained that, while we might not see how deep the water was, we would sail between the buoys to ensure that we could get out to the ocean. The buoys served to help us navigate our way through to know where the waterway was deep enough for a boat to go.
Pearl Harbor's ship channel has concrete blocks on either side of the channel. I'm not sure why, but in some places, you can step out on those concrete blocks to get right up to the water when the tide is out. If we had wandered outside the navigated path and tide had been out, we might have scraped the bottom of the boat on the concrete blocks that surrounded that path and thus damaged our boat.
Navigating through a Document
Just as we navigated through the marina, your readers will need to navigate through your document. And effective information design considers the reader's "navigation." Your reader may be searching for specific information—e.g., a link, a source, a heading—and you as a writer want to be able to enable the reader to find that information.For example, when you write a report, you provide your reader with a table of contents and you label each page after the first with numbers. Then, readers who are looking for information can go through the table of contents, identify the location for that information, and find the page on which that information exists.
On your resume, you will provide your reader with conventional headings that will help a reader locate specific information. You may label sections with "Experience" or "Education" or "Skills" to help the reader find that information more easily.
If you are writing a virtual document, you will also provide navigation. For example, if you are writing a blog, you will provide your readers with a list of archived posts (preferably by title rather than by date) so your readers can locate a post by the information they are seeking.
Navigation is central in information design, and to effectively plan your navigation you must focus on your user's needs and consider how the user will use the document. (Planning is part of the writing process, and you can consider navigation during the early stages of the process to improve your document's effectiveness.) To successfully plan and navigate a document, consider what conventional elements your reader expects and how your reader will work through the document. Make navigation a priority, particularly if you want to create a user-centered design.
