Design Basics: Orientation

Conventional Media

• Book orientation techniques well understood, well established: title on spine, page numbers, running titles, etc.
• They work because users know where to expect them
• Television: conventions now for expected orientation: station logo on bottom corner of screen, program theme music and titles at commercial breaks, etc.

Web Documents

• Can't necessarily tell at a glance if a document is part of a collection, or where it belongs in collection
• Web author must provide consistent page identification in predictable places on each page to identify its role in collection