Rookie and Veteran navigation menus
28th of June 2007
I love it when websites carefully innovate with new ways or laying out a web page with interesting new navigation that actually works. In web design usability, one of the key points to keep in mind is to make things people are familiar with. That means that you just do what everyone else does which then leads to less thinking for the users. However, a lot of people try new ways but few succeed. Wufoo's however have succeed with something highly usable and innovative.
All 12 items in the navigation bar are split into two groups: "For Rookies" and "For Veterans". I for one have never used Wufoo so I know I should look at the "For Rookies" section when I look for what I'm looking for, for example an About page. It immediately makes my selection, as a rookie, much smaller and more bearable. It's not hard to skim over all 12 items but the division of these two groups helps a lot.
I'd love to try something like this on some website I have where there has to be lots of navigation options. However, I'm not convinced about the word "rookies" since it's too american for me. Perhaps I'd use "For Beginners" or "For Newcomers" instead.