A simple navigation structure in a wordpress weblog, typically found at the bottom of the landing page:
Why is this intuitive?
- Reading direction in English (and Dutch, and many other languages) is from left to right. When reading we are trained at starting in the top left corner, then moving to the right and downwards.
- “Next entries” is found at the expected place. In order to advance to the next page, a reader clicks on the link at the bottom right.
So obviously it makes sense to have links at these places pointing to a mysterious “next” and “previous” place. In most cases at least. Weblogs are a little different.
Confusion!
- Weblogs present their most recent content first! Still no problem, this is what weblog readers expect. They don’t want to be bothered with old stories, they want to see what’s new.
- This changes the story and the user expectations. After the newest blog posts, the user wants to navigate to the not-so-new posts: the previous posts. But still the next page. Fortunately, weblog software can disable or hide the link that does not work, so on the landing page the user has only one choice. Still confusing, a simple “read more” would have been better, but okay. Your user clicks and safely gets to the not-most-recent-but-still-very-recent posts.
More confusion
- Assuming that your content is still interesting your reader admires this second page and arrives at the bottom. Now there are two links, as in the picture above. But by now, they have really stopped making sense.
- There is still the notion of clicking in the bottom right corner to move on. This time the next page your user wants to see is the page with a little less recent than the-still-very-recent posts he has just read. But this time there are two real links to choose from. Very confusing.
At this point there are a couple of possible outcomes. 1) Your user suddenly realises he has something else to do and gives up. 2) Your user is feeling lucky and clicks at the correct link. 3) It’s not his lucky day and he clicks on the wrong link.
Even more confusion
Let’s assume it’s not his lucky day and he follows the wrong link. This brings him back to the not-most-recent-but-still-very-recent posts. He quickly realises that this is not what he wanted and he decides to correct his error (yes, he really thinks it’s his fault, it’s surprisingly sad how easily people attribute errors to their own behavior instead of the machine or the interface). At this point your heroic user wants to:
- get back to the previous page he visited
- which from this exact same place was the next page when he was here before
- in order to reach the next unseen content
- which was written earlier in time
At this point your brave user desparately gives up. Wouldn’t you?
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