Pattern 76: Content is linked to navigation *
AKA:

You are concerned with providing a SENSE OF LOCATION IN WORKFLOW (75) through a sound navigation scheme, but your development budget is limited.

Can I base the navigation scheme on a standard product and so save development time?

Therefore

Link navigation to a model of users’ domain knowledge. One page implements one workflow step. Avoid shell architecture.

This pattern is terminal within this language.

Contributors and sources
Richard Dué, Detlef Vollmann, Spool et al. (1999)

The study by Spool et al. (1999) showed that when usersvisited shell sites they found it very hard to hard to use for searching for the information they needed. Shell sites are those where a fixed organization and navigation scheme is defined and content is then plugged into it.

Just as form and content are intertwine in art and nature so on the web. The way you navigate depends deeply on the material you are navigating and therefore the navigation scheme should reflect the exigencies of the content as well as the use cases. Consider, for example, the different ways that bibliographical, leisure and commercial sites are approached. A tourist does arrive at a travel site with a conception of library-style organization that he might have used in his day job – a librarian.

On workflow sites it is clear that the workflow itself should guide at least some of the navigation.

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