As outlined in the first post in this series, the vision for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s mobile website was tightly task-focused. With that vision in hand, we proposed an information architecture that was neither too broad, nor too deep: 6 main categories and a depth of 3 or 4 levels felt comfortable.
Trickier however was devising a navigation design that felt equally comfortable. Several approaches were considered and refined into 2 rival proposals. The first adhered closely to iOS conventions.
The second approach includes a global navigation menu that’s available from everywhere in the website.
In terms of the number of taps to accomplish any given task, the two options were roughly equivalent. The iOS approach, however, just felt more effortful and restrictive – too much climbing into and out of rabbit holes.
We investigated mobile websites with navigation menus including the NFL, Subaru and others and our confidence to deviate from iOS’s dominant practice was bolstered.
And so after examining both options with the TSO (and some healthy internal debate at Usability Matters), the second option prevailed.
