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department-of-veterans-affairs / va.gov-cms

Editor-centered management for Veteran-centered content.
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VAMC/Left Nav IA Feedback #13908

Open mmiddaugh opened 4 years ago

mmiddaugh commented 4 years ago

Issue Description

This issue captures IA feedback given by @mnorthuis during the staging review for the VAMC left navigation menu upgrade.

1. For some L3 content that is hidden in the left nav, the left nav is still displayed on the page but the left nav no longer has a "you are here" indicator. Examples:

2. URLs do not reflect that these are L3 pages - their breadcrumbs are accurate but URLs are not

3. The "Home" portion of the breadcrumb disappears on some pages, but not all. For example, it is not shown Health services and Locations pages, but does appear on Events and About us.

4. The L2 options in the left nav do not all have hover states when they are expanded to show L3 items, but they do have hover states there are no L3s to show.

5. For content that is at the top level of the VAMC site, and not part of a "spoke", there is no "You are here" indicator in the left nav. The left nav should be designed to accommodate this, or it should be removed, or the IA should be reviewed for these pages.

How to configure this issue

rtwell commented 4 years ago

I will offer what clarification I can:

  1. For pages like Women Veteran care, the side nav should be present, and the parent page (in this case, Health services) should display the "you are here" marker.

  2. Correct.

  3. We will not display "Home" in the breadcrumb on Pittsburgh. Users consistently expected it to direct them to Pittsburgh home, not VA.gov proper. The fact that it is showing on some breadcrumbs currently is a bug.

  4. Correct.

  5. I concur—this is part of a larger conversation that i think @mnorthuis @jenniferlee-dsva Meg Peters @davidconlon need to have a come to Jesus moment and figure out what to do with them.

  6. For pages that do not have a spot in the left nav (e.g. all of the individual News releases):

    • their respective breadcrumb would be VA Pittsburgh health care > News releases > News release title
    • The side nav is hidden
mnorthuis commented 4 years ago

I would like to continue to discuss numbers 3 and 6 above. Pulling in @mpeterz as well.

  1. I do have concerns about removing the "Home" link in the breadcrumb. I understand where this is coming from but I have a couple of follow up questions...

    • How often are users trying to get to the main health care system page? This seems to me to be not a common thing users would be looking to do, but I could very well be very wrong. I'm also wondering if this will be an issue for health care systems where the system name is not so similar to the main VAMC name?
    • Could we alter the labels used in the breadcrumb to give links more info scent? For example "VA home", or add the word "system" to the primary system page.

  2. If we are showing the left nav for pages like those in issue 1 in the original list, why wouldn't we show the left nav on these as well? The parent page would be highlighted as the you are here (i.e. News releases), providing users with an easy way to get out of News releases and into another area of the VAMC site.

davidconlon commented 4 years ago

@mnorthuis Thanks-this is great feedback and we can take this (and likely many other things) into consideration for a future iteration. We're by no means done with this, but we're done for now.

I think that there are elements that it would be helpful to have more analytics and systems coming on-line and we may need to take other items into consideration as we think about how it could work for the rest of VA.gov (or not, for that matter)!

mmiddaugh commented 3 years ago

Keep this open as it collects IA feedback and issues for consideration

mmiddaugh commented 1 year ago

Moving this from #13895 so we can have everything in one place.

The Left Navigation menu was not intended to appear on VAMC pages deeper than L3. The spoke label "ABOUT VA PITTSBURGH" is counted as 1 - even though it's not clickable.

However, the Left Nav appears on example level 4 page.

This was based on a belief that the Left Nav could not indent to this level. this page proves it is possible so we need to determine the intent given this new information.

Link to Slack thread

Screenshot ![image.png](https://images.zenhubusercontent.com/5d8a47393ac3440001d1a2ed/d5bcc2b8-4039-46a9-9d9c-6614318a9981)
davidmpickett commented 11 months ago

Curious about "The Left Navigation menu was not intended to appear on VAMC pages deeper than L3" as it may relate to Police Data pages. Is the idea that L4 pages have would no Left Nav? Because if the police data page per facility is nested under the facility, then the police data pages will be L4

mnorthuis commented 11 months ago

The Left Navigation menu was not intended to appear on VAMC pages deeper than L3. The spoke label "ABOUT VA PITTSBURGH" is counted as 1 - even though it's not clickable.

@mmiddaugh I'm curious where this came from? I was under the impression that one of the biggest reasons for this version of the left nav was so it would always show the full nav all the way down to the level you are at - which is something thing the benefits left nav does not, it resets instead of showing the full nav.

In addition, within the last year-ish, there were changes made to the VAMC sites to not allow nesting of pages beyond level 4 because we knew the left nav didn't indent that far...although I think it tried to :-)

Also want to clarify how you identify the level of a page - the spoke is not a level as it is not clickable and not a part of the structure. You can use the segments in the URL or the breadcrumb to count the levels. VA.gov home is always 0 (root level).

@davidmpickett regarding the police pages - is there intended to be a police page for every location or just a page at the system level for all locations? This was something that was not clear to us. The request came through looking like it was 1 page per system.

rtwell commented 11 months ago

@mnorthuis you are correct—the limit to the number if levels was put in place to prevent too much nesting (as the legacy IA had in spades). Given that structure, the full nav can and would be persistently displayed so users didn't have to fumble around with opening and closing.

davidmpickett commented 11 months ago

@davidmpickett regarding the police pages - is there intended to be a police page for every location or just a page at the system level for all locations? This was something that was not clear to us. The request came through looking like it was 1 page per system.

@mnorthuis Apologies for any confusion. We're still nailing down the content model for the police pages. Current thinking is that there will be both:

Hopefully by our kick-off meeting next week we'll have more certainty and updated designs to reflect this

mnorthuis commented 11 months ago

@davidmpickett thank you - just noting here that I don't believe the individual location pages currently have child pages below them. At one time there was the concept of having a facility map under each location, and the potential to have a mobile unit schedule, but I'm not sure where those landed. So, if we have never placed a child page under an individual location, there may be some additional considerations needed.