Problem

Scrolling through one long article is faster than reading separate pages.

Motivation

demotivates the reading and browsing experience

Solution

Do not split up articles or long lists but keep them intact, as a whole, to be read in one breath, to be glanced through and to be compared.

Diagram

A drawing

Principle

Selection, navigation, ...

Use when

Sites with long content pages, search results, product listings.

Implementation

According to research, users can navigate the most efficient with roughly 16 (ungrouped) top-level links leading into 2-3 subsequent menus.

Discussion

Examples

Connections

Relations to higher and lower patterns

Literature

• Enabling Extremely Rapid Navigation in Your Web or Document
• As the Page Scrolls - User Interface Engineering - This article appeared in the July/August 1998 issue of Eye For Design, a bi-monthly newsletter that we pack with our latest usability and user interface design research.
• GUUUI - Balancing visual and structural complexity in interaction design - GUUUI.com, Issue 8, October 2003.
• Breadth vs. Depth - Kath Straub and Susan Weinschen. UI Design Update Newsletter – April, 2003
• Examining the effects of hypertext shape on User Performance - Bernard, M.L. (2002). Usability News, 4.2
• Depth vs Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links (Student team research under Ben Schneiderman, 1997) Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of depth and breadth of web site structure on the user response time. The variables evaluated were five different web page linking strategies with varying depth and breadth. The results indicated that response time increased as the depth of the web site structure increased. This shows that, for a database with a large amount of scatted information like the internet, the links to the various parts of the database should be collected thoughtfully, arranged and presented simultaneously to prevent back and forth searching, since the latter is more complex and results in more errors.
• Are the Product Lists on Your Site Reducing Sales? - White paper. Summary from guuui.com: UIE found that when product lists provided enough information for the test participants to make informed product selections they where five times more likely to add items to their shopping carts, than when they had to click back and forth between product lists and product description pages - a behaviour named pogo-sticking by UIE. Also, the participants who didn't find enough information in the product lists where one-third more likely to quit shopping and had lower opinions of the site.
• Linear, Moderate Hypertext: The scrolling page with hyperlinked subheadings conveys large-scale infomation structure better than isolated cards

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-- ArthurClemens - 02 Oct 2003