An alternate approach to menu systems for a better UX
When we talk about building websites and we think about UX, we often end up doing a lot of research about our target users. We want to understand their needs or goals, we are very much focused on the users tasks — what they need to do in order to reach their goals. The big mistake that we often make, is we start to construct our navigation systems focusing on tasks as well. This may seem logical at first, but is that really the best approach when taking a human centered approach?
Object vs task focused
Lets take a step back and look at a few examples…
The Orbitz website is the place to book hotels, flights and vacations. Take a look at its menu system, do you see any tasks listed in there? The menu system lists a set of objects, not tasks.
Priceline is another travel website, it uses the exact same approach. It uses an object orientated menu approach.
Take a look at Apples' iPad homescreen for a minute, if you want to accomplish a task, you click on an icon first. This is an object first approach — we only perform our intended tasks after clicking an object.
The “object oriented” approach has been around since the 1950's and has been an approach adopted by software development. But, this can be extended to a broader context.
“‘Object oriented’ in this sense has nothing to do with whether object-oriented programming is used. Instead, it means that the user interface as perceived by the user is oriented to the users’ domain objects rather than to the computer software applications.” — Tom Dayton
Designing Object Oriented Interfaces
Dave Collins’s classic book, Designing Object Oriented Interfaces, defines the following characteristics of object-oriented user interface design:
- Users perceive and act on objects.
- Users can classify objects based on how they behave.
- In the context of what users are trying to do, all the user interface objects fit together into a coherent overall representation.
As pointed out in the above post on UX Mastery back in 2012, (and the inspiration for this post), we should be thinking nouns first. This was the example used to illustrate the point:
When a user wakes up in the morning and starts to organise the day, which mental model is more likely?
Do you think “Wash” (verb), and then all the items that need washing, or do you typically think of an item or objects (noun) and the tasks associated with those things.
As users, we are more inclined to think about objects first, and the tasks centered around these tasks as second.
According to the natural partitions hypothesis, the noun class has the privilege of naming the highly cohesive bits of the world, whereas verbs and prepositions have the job of partitioning the leftovers — a diffuse set of largely relational components (Gentner, 1981, 1982; Gentner & Boroditsky, 2001). — Why Verbs are Hard to Learn by Dedre Gentner
Advise for more initiative designs
UX Mastery offers the following advice:
- Navigation is centered around objects — nouns, not verbs.
- Objects are always the primary representations in the UI.
- Actions (verbs) performed on the objects comprise the tasks.
- Tasks are secondarily represented by actions on objects.
In conclusion, using tasks as a basis for navigation, adds another layer of complexity for users. Using an object based navigation approach, allows for a more natural pattern of how we generally think about tasks.
What do you think? Are websites more user-friendly following an object orientated approach?
