Software Interface Design

Navigation for Websites and software applications fascinates me. I’m always on the lookout for some new and inspirational way to help users find the content and features they are looking for. And based on my personal style and what I feel are best practices for the domain I focus on (enterprise web-based applications and websites), I gravitate towards simple, clean, and efficient methods.

Yesterday a design student that I’m mentoring (thanks Kelsea!) showed me the Maroon 5 website and I was really impressed. I’m not concerned with the implementation, which in this case happens to be Flash. I’m focused on the concept. The designer used a very simple geometrical shape with a strong color to draw attention to navigation that “appears when you need it”. You can quickly find the navigation anchor–an orange triangle in a sea of grey/black–but the choices remain hidden allowing the content to dominate and show through.

When you move your mouse over the image the navigation menu appears:

In another part of the site it is done slightly differently. The orange bar is dropped and the navigation text floats over the background:

Excellent job!

If you know of any other really creative navigation methods, please reply to this post and share with the other readers.