How to Design and Test for Common Sense: Navigation, Affordance and Labeling

ARTICLE SNIPPET - In our previous articles in this series we talked about tests that you can do on your website to measure its usability as a whole. This article is devoted to two essential aspects of your site, navigation affordance and labeling, how to design for their usability and simple tests you can conduct as you develop your interface. These tests can be done informally "over the cube wall" by asking fellow employees to participate, or with actual users in a more formal usability test environment.

As always, having users as test participants is recommended whenever you can manage it. There are two elements to helping visitors navigate your site: the manner in which you link your content and pages, and the words you use to identify where the link goes. Let's deal with words first.

The cardinal rule when deciding on which words to use to describe the various departments, sections and categories on your website is to ask, "What would a user call this?"

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