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Information Design—Week 4, Assignment 1

What is the difference between navigation and an interface? How are they related?

Historically, navigation generally means traveling physically between two points. Essential to navigation is knowing where both points are and knowing how to figure out where you are between them. This principle was applied to software design as a way to understand how to get around in an application.

An application’s navigation is part of the whole interface. Specifically, it is the part that informs users where they are, where they can go, and what they can make the application do. In desktop software, this is usually achieved through the use of buttons and menus. On the Web, hyperlinks are the usual and expected method of navigation.

Interface is a more general term that encompasses navigation. An application or Web site’s interface is the tangible side of an application that allows a user to interact with or extract information from itself. A Web site, for example, is an example of primarily visual interface, but interfaces are not necessarily visual. A telephone, for example, audibly alerts a user that someone is calling when it rings.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-centered_computing
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface