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| Stewart is an interaction and user interface consultant specializing in web-based applications. He began working on the web in 1996 and since that time has worked with clients from a variety of sectors from the Fortune 500 to non-profit & public corporations to small start-ups and most things in between. He has managed the design group at a large web consultancy, co-founded a successful dot.com and worked in freelance team and independent consulting roles. He is also the founder and organizer of the 5k (www.the5k.org), an international competition which awards excellence in web design and production. The 5k recognizes the roles that constraints play in creativity and discipline in craftsmanship. He is a frequent public speaker at academic and professional events, has served on a W3C working group (for XForms), and is involved with several professional organizations. His MPhil from Cambridge University is in philosophy. In 2001 he was nominated for a Chrysler Design Award. Contribution: The Poverty of the Navigational Metaphor The navigational metaphor – and all the spatial concepts that come along with it – is all-pervasive in design for the web. Web users « get from one page to another » and designers try to create « navigation systems » which « show the user where they are, and where they can go ». But these metaphors are terrible: the pages on a site do not relate to one another the way points in space relate to one another. The ideas of orientation and movement have no analogues in web infrastructure or end design. The specific arrangement of links in site maps, « nav bars », and hierarchical displays is usually meaningless. And most importantly, people who are using the web are doing something altogether different than people who are actually navigating. [..] In this presentation I will discuss the flaws in the navigational metaphor, where it came from and how it became so pervasive and the faulty context it creates for both theoretical progress and practical working arrangements in design teams. I will also present some alternative conceptions and suggest a way of thinking which avoids the problems surrounding navigational metaphor. |
 
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