Navigating on the Information Highway

The “information highway” is being created now, and the design task is monumental. Some of the most critical problems in designing a navigation environment have never been addressed before, and developers are demanding that either we (as human interface designers) supply answers now or they will make up their own answers. There is too little time and there are too few resources to fully explore interesting theoretical issues, and yet the results of such exploration (if on the right topics) could be critically important. This paper will review some of the practical design issues that Ameritech has identified as being important in defining a navigation environment, and approaches we have taken to those design issues. These approaches have been shaped by a lack of design guidance in some areas, and a finite set of resources (especially time). The paper will also identify directions where research would be useful, and time frames during which the results will still be valuable.