UsableMarkets

I’m working on a project right now where cool (spectacular!) navigation — navigation that doesn’t just guide us through a web site experience, but is the experience — is something we’d like to do. While not appropriate in all situations, sometimes it’s good to live a little.

An example of what we’re thinking about can be found at Etsy, the market for hand made goods. There are all sorts of neat ways to navigate their goods, including by color (which is not only novel, but useful).

PicLens also comes up frequently enough, and navigating through Flicker images with PicLens can be pretty cool. In particular what I like about it is that you can browse many (many!) images at once without have to always click “Next Page.”

Also, there’s Tag Galaxy, which takes navigation metaphors about as far as one can take them (galactically speaking). Navigate through a metadata solar system, select the planet (tag combo) you’d like to see, and then watch the images fly in.

Certainly this is no longer your father’s web navigation. One wonders how long before the old standbys — left-hand nav, flyout menus, etc — will be a thing of past.

As always, thanks for listening.
~alex