Sean Walther's Blog

Pie Based Navigation

A blog posting from Not The User’s Fault, with regards to software navgation and leveraging Pie navigation, Pie In The Sky. 

Go there, read it.

Jono DiCarlo (of Humanized) makes a great point, the standard list types of interfaces we normally use don’t make sense. 

In his post, he analyzes the benefits and problems associated with pie based navigation.

The greatest benefit, is that users associate a direction with an option — and can form habitual patterns of behavior.  This makes the navigation seem very logical.

To contrast with that, when the user gets comfortable with the location of navigation this way, he becomes very set back when that navigation structure changes.

Think about it as your car.  You, in your driver seat, are in the center.  Around you in all angles are different options for you to execute.  You know exactly where to look to find what you want.  It’s the same interface that web users can use.  They can efficiently get their mouse to the option they want.  

Alternatively, imagine every button in your car were on a long list.  You know where everything is, but you have to skim over all of the buttons whenever you want to hit any single other one.  You also have to reach further for some buttons than others.

The average distance the mouse has to travel is minimized, as all options are placed around the mouse at an equal distance.  

It’s a great idea.  Maybe the basis for a Flash navigation experiment in the future.

Tags: Flash, humanized, Jono DiCarlo, navigation, user interface