Screen Design Question
June 23, 2009 12:00 AM
Argh! I wrote a whole long reply to this and then it seems that the Lounge went down for a few minutes just as I was submitting it and it got lost
Well, here's the general gist...
The placement of the navigation buttons is something that I feel pretty passionate about. I think (and have read) that the navigation buttons (or at least the Back and Next buttons) should always be in the bottom-right-hand corner, because that's where the learner's eyes (or even mouse, if the learner is very kinesthetic and uses their mouse to follow along) end up when they're done with the page. It's always been very frustrating to me that the majority of the templates that Trivantis has created put the navigation elements in the upper-right, which either renders the template useless to me or requires me to spend a lot of time doctoring it up to move the butons. (You can't just move the buttons because, very often they're kind of graphically "built-in" to other background elements.)
My standard button order is Exit, Menu, Back, Next. I always want the real navigation buttons (Back and Next) to be in the most right-hand position (for the reason previously mentioned) and the Exit button in the furthest position away from them, so as to minimize the chance of the learner accidentally clicking on it (although I do put in a "stopper" that asks them to confirm that they really do want to exit anyway).
I think I said a couple of other things, but that's all I have time to recreate for now!
dsl4ou said:How do people view a e-learning page? Do people naturally look at a certain part of screen? Do they tend to start at the top left and read to the bottom right like a book? Our group has decided to have a page with navigational icons with descriptions and we are questioning in what order they should be in. Some have suggested most used to least used? Others suggest listing them in order as they appear on the screen from top left working to bottom right. Any suggestions?
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