smalers
commented
3 years ago One idea is to put the menu selected text under the main menu. For example, the Poudre Basin Information website main menus are as follows. If Current Conditions / Environment - Wildfires is selected, the Current Conditions text could be highlighted in some way (underline, box, shading, etc.) and the words Environment - Wildfires could be shown in small text under Current Conditions. This would alert the user of the main menu and sub-menu item that was selected and corresponds to the map. Technical considerations include:
- Is there enough layout space to put the text under a menu without causing horizontal space issues? Maybe there is a way to use the font properties and/or
...in text so that the text is always sized properly to fit in available space and be readable. - The map has a name that is shown in the top of the legend area and the URL also is a clue to the page so the additional information may not need to be verbose.
- Don't want to make the title bar any taller if possible.
This is not a high priority but would improve the user experience.
Now that the InfoMapper is being used for applications that have many maps, it can be easy to lose track of what the current page corresponds to. This is partly due to individual maps having names that are relatively short such as Current Drought whereas the full menu is Current Conditions / Water Supply - Drought. Other maps could be more confusing because the map title might be similar or the same for multiple maps under different main menus (because each menu has a different focus). Despite efforts to make things obvious, it is possible to lose track. I have the same problem with other menu-driven applications on the web. Note that the URL does give a clue but the words don't exactly match the menus.
Therefore, it would be nice to somehow indicate the breadcrumb trail to the current page.
One option is to show something like Current Conditions / Current Drought on the map page, even in a small font. However, this has the downside of taking up real estate and I'm not sure where it would fit. Showing in the main menu bar would be confusing because it is right under the menus themselves. Showing on the map legend might work but might not look nice given the currently clean layout of the legend (we have avoided clutter).
Another option is to somehow style the current selected main menu and maybe also the sub-menu. Then the user could see that they selected Current Conditions and the map title would tell them what it is within that menu. For example underline the main menu, draw a box around, etc. This may be enough.
As usual, with UI work, sometimes the solution is not obvious until it can be seen in a prototype.