Navigation Systems

The Griffith Homepage

For this week's blog, I've chosen to assess Griffith.

More specifically, its navigation bar.

Link’s Label	Destination’s Heading	Destination’s <title>
Navigation Bar
Future students	Future students	Future students – Griffith University
Current students	Students	Students – Griffith University
Staff	Staff Services and Resources	Staff Services and Resources – Griffith University
About Griffith	About Griffith	About Griffith – Griffith University
Research	Research	Research – Griffith University
Alumni	Development and Alumni	Development and Alumni – Griffith University
Other Links
Griffith Portal	Griffith Portal	Griffith Intranet Portal
Contact us	Contact us	Contact us – Griffith University

Now to enumerate the issues – to start, the colour of the navigation bar, the placement of its elements, and even the text within the search box are all different depending on the area of the site.

The ‘Griffith Portal’ seems to be a completely different website; it omits the navigation bar, and the <title> doesn’t follow the standard ‘[site area] – Griffith University’ structure which is generally consistent across most of the site.

Some of the naming is a bit spotty, ‘Alumni’ changes to ‘Development and Alumni’, ‘Staff’ to ‘Staff Services and Resources’, ‘Current Students’ to just ‘Students’. More pedantically, the ‘S’ in ‘Future students’ is lower case, but the ‘G’ in ‘About Griffith’ is capitalised.

Griffith has a few discrepancies, but the nav bar and headings are relatively consistent and logical throughout. Some work could be done towards improving consistency, but for the most part the labels get their destination’s purpose across.

QUT

The QUT nav bar

I’ll also assess the navigation bars of some competing sites. I’ll start with QUT.

Link’s Label	Destination’s Heading	Destination’s <title>
Navigation Bar
Study	Study	QUT – Study
Research	Research	QUT – Research
Industry	Industry and partnerships	QUT – Industry and partnerships
About	About	QUT – About
Alumni	Alumni	QUT – Alumni
Giving	Giving	QUT – Giving
International students	International Students	QUT – International Students
Other Links
News	News	QUT – News
Jobs	?	QUT | Jobs at QUT
Library	Library	QUT | Library
Contact	Contact	QUT – Contact
Current Students	Student gateway	Home – QUT Students
Current Staff	Staff gateway	Home – QUT Staff

At a glance, it seems QUT is more consistent in its navigation bar; the only name change is ‘Industry’ being changed to ‘Industry and partnership’, which is forgivable given the new name adds important information but would be too long to fit in the nav bar.

The discrepancies start to show in the ‘Other Links’; with ‘Jobs’, ‘Library’, ‘Current Students’ and ‘Current Staff’, the <title> structure changes. Even the nav bar changes across these particular areas of the site; some of the elements change to be more pertinent to the current area of the site. Current Students, for example, displays information regarding enrolment and fees.

The majority of the nav bar is consistent; it’s mostly the ‘Other Links’ which need work. While the changes in the nav bar might be confusing if you forget which area of the site you’re on, they generally go towards streamlining the experience. The most inconsistent area of the site is the ‘Jobs’ section, which looks like a completely different website.

QUT is pretty good; the nav bar doesn’t change amongst any of the main links in the nav bar, and the headings are logical and consistent. One of the main issues with QUT is the change in the nav bar in some of the ‘Other Links’, although it does aim to streamline a user’s experience, and so might prove beneficial.

UQ

The UQ nav bar

And finally, we get to UQ.

Link’s Label	Destination’s Heading	Destination’s <title>
Navigation Bar
ABOUT	About UQ	About The University of Queensland, Australia
NEWS	UQ News	UQ News Online – The University of Queensland
FUTURE STUDENTS	Courses and Programs	Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia
UQ JOBS	UQ JOBS	UQ Jobs – The University of Queensland, Australia
TEACHING & LEARNING	Teaching & Learning at UQ	Teaching and Learning at UQ – The University of Queensland, Australia
RESEARCH	Research at UQ	Research at UQ – The University of Queensland, Australia
ALUMNI	Alumni & Community	Alumni – The University of Queensland, Australia
INTERNATIONAL	UQ International	UQ International – The University of Queensland, Australia
Other Links
CONTACTS	UQ Contacts	Contacts – The University of Queensland, Australia
SEARCH	UQ Search	UQ Search Home
STUDY	Courses and Programs	Courses and Programs – The University of Queensland, Australia
MAPS	UQ Maps	UQ Maps – The University of Queensland, Australia
NEWS	UQ News	UQ News Online – The University of Queensland
EVENTS	UQ Events	UQ Events, The University of Queensland
LIBRARY	UQ Library	Home Page | UQ Library
MY.UQ	Current Students	my.UQ Student, The University of Queensland

There seems to be no convention to the <title> or the page’s heading. Some of the links are redundant; the ‘News’ link in ‘Other Links’ is the same as the one in the ‘Navigation Bar’. Moreover, the nav bar changes between pretty much every page. Take the ‘FUTURE STUDENTS’ section as an example.

The nav bar is different; however it displays more pertinent links, which aim to streamline the experience. The heading is ‘Courses and Programs’ which is a completely different naming convention. Furthermore, take note of the ‘UQ JOBS’ section.

The nav bar has changed again; moreover, even the heading font has changed. ‘UQ’ is more graphical than it is on any of the other pages which also have ‘UQ’ in their heading.

UQ, is generally inconsistent. Their nav bar is different for every area of the site. As with QUT, one might argue that the inconsistencies in the nav bar are to facilitate a streamlined user-experience. Having said this, most of the issues are due to carelessness – not abiding by a titling structure, for example; often, the heading labels aren’t the same as the link leading to the page.

Summary

The labelling systems of the sites vary; they talk about the same subjects, but lead you through them differently. UQ for example focuses on subsections of the current area of the site, while both Griffith and QUT tend to show broad areas with links therein.

I'd have to conclude that out of the three, QUT is the victor. While Griffith remains consistent, barring some 'special' areas such as the Griffith Portal, most of its inconsistencies seem unintentional. UQ is far too sporadic to be considered, and while QUT is also inconsistent in some areas, it's typically intentional and aims to aid navigation.