Rating: 
Summary: Interested in your experiences...
Review: I'd be really interested in hearing about your experiences with nav design. This book is based on talks with many designers and developers, and I think that's its greatest strength. I'd like to continue to hear about what everyone's struggling with (and how you're solving problems in interesting ways). Feel free to email me at jennifer@squarecircle.com with comments or questions. Also, you may want to visit the book web site for samples and updates, the bibliography and netography, and other info. Look forward to hearing from you! jef
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent place to start
Review: If you're an old hand at web design, this book is mostly valuable for it's pointers to examples. It can connect you with people and ideas, and is therefore worth your scanning time. But the book is at it's best as a guide for people just getting started, just learning how to think about design for networked media. It's a better starting point than some other books because it recognizes that you can't think about web navigation in isolation -- navigation is a topic that sticks out into almost every aspect of the user experience. So, starting with navigation, Jennifer Fleming steps back and addresses everything from understanding user needs to usability testing. It's a broad (and therefore sometimes shallow by necessity) foundation from which to build a design approach. Lots of research, lots of examples, lots of pointers. A shotgun, not a rifle.
Rating: 
Summary: well, it's ok, and ...
Review: It's worth reading it, but you will probably think all the time "yes I know that, and?". If this is your first book about web usability it will help you but if you wish to be enlighten think twice. I'm a graphic designer working on this field since 1996 and no example or analysis in this book surprised me at all; in fact it reaches more or less the same conclusions that anyone who visits those websites will find.
Rating:
Summary: well, it's ok, and ...
Review: It's worth reading it, but you will probably think all the time "yes I know that, and?". If this is your first book about web usability it will help you but if you wish to be enlighten think twice. I'm a graphic designer working on this field since 1996 and no example or analysis in this book surprised me at all; in fact it reaches more or less the same conclusions that anyone who visits those websites will find.
Rating:
Summary: 1998 book anticipates 21st century themes
Review: Jennifer Fleming has created a lively and wide-ranging discussion of Web design practices for the turn of the century. This 250-page volume accepts the Web for what it is - a task-based mass medium reaching for its audience through the often clouded glass of the computer-based browser screen. Rather than fuss over the Web's elusive true form (publishing medium? hyper-animated poster? PC software platform? supermarket?), Fleming simply accepts the obvious: there are all sorts of sites out there. For Fleming, tellingly, the design challenge lies not with deciding the right sort of site, and certainly not with the look of your navigation buttons. Instead, the challenge lies with adapting sites to the increasingly well-documented struggles of their audience. Fleming's book starts with Web users, ends with Web users, and stays with them all the way through. Jakob Nielsen, of course, has been gathering devotees to his cause of Web usability for several years. But Nielsen, rational as he always is, speaks from outside the designers' circle. Fleming, a practicing design consultant, takes the Nielsen ideas (and others) and turns them into a full-fledged design process, a toolbox for building sites. Among the best of Fleming's tools is the "user profile", the half-imaginary story about a specific user arriving at a site with particular needs, desires and concerns. You can see this slice of the book excerpted at Web Review. The technique lets you think creatively about all the different frustrations of different user groups - problems with graphics, problems with information design, problems with underlying business processes. Then there's Fleming's succinct yet detailed description of Digital Knowledge Assets' "ethnographic" methods - such as asking users for stories of satisfying Web experiences, and even giving them disposable cameras to photograph what happens to them as they work. To her user profiling, ethnographics and the like, Fleming adds a rich mix of more traditional Web project techniques - scenario planning, brainstorming, conventional usability testing and the like, all well-described. And over the top she sprinkles wisdom from scores of sources - from vintage design sources such as Edward Tufte through so-cool designers like Clement Mok and Erik Spiekermann to obscure sources such as a 1996 volume arguing that people expect computer-based media to behave "politely". Parts of Web Navigation are respectful journalism, as Fleming effectively picks the brains of the Web business's best. These luminaries' views broaden her book handily into a catalogue of current Web best practice.
Rating:
Summary: Strong, but not Herculean
Review: The first half of the book is a good strong INTRODUCTIOn to the issues of user interface design. Well written, easy-to-read and follow, a good resource for someone with beginner to intermediate level understanding of interface design. The second half of the book? ho-hum.
Rating: 
Summary: A necessary resource for web site development
Review: This book brings together all the concerns we face in creating an enjoyable experience for our users and shows us solutions that are real and easily accomplished. Although the main topic of the book is navigation, Jennifer guides us through all the details we need to consider in designing and planning a web site that will fulfill our users needs, as well as those of our clients. This book will be at the top of my recommended reading for all my web classes.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview on the current state of web design
Review: This book covers a wide array of issues related to the creation of navigation schemes for web sites. Fleming discusses current strategies in site architecture, interaction design and site development (just to name a few). In addition, Fleming describes why these strategies work, how to implement them, and presents fascinating insights from the web's leading design experts (Clement Mok, Jakob Nielsen, Nathan Shedroff, etc.). One of the most all-encompassing books I've ever read on the subject, this book gives an excellent overview of what's involved in web navigation design. It contains many truths about the problems facing web navigation and offers clear-cut approaches in a very practical manner. The book's high-level approach is ideal for anyone interested in just an overview of web design, but it also offers an impressive list of references to further the research endeavors of readers with a more vested interest in the subject. Some of the examples and case studies will become a bit dated; however, there will always be a tremendous amount of value in this book due to the timelessness of the concepts presented in it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview on the current state of web design
Review: This book covers a wide array of issues related to the creation of navigation schemes for web sites. Fleming discusses current strategies in site architecture, interaction design and site development (just to name a few). In addition, Fleming describes why these strategies work, how to implement them, and presents fascinating insights from the web's leading design experts (Clement Mok, Jakob Nielsen, Nathan Shedroff, etc.). One of the most all-encompassing books I've ever read on the subject, this book gives an excellent overview of what's involved in web navigation design. It contains many truths about the problems facing web navigation and offers clear-cut approaches in a very practical manner. The book's high-level approach is ideal for anyone interested in just an overview of web design, but it also offers an impressive list of references to further the research endeavors of readers with a more vested interest in the subject. Some of the examples and case studies will become a bit dated; however, there will always be a tremendous amount of value in this book due to the timelessness of the concepts presented in it.
Rating:
Summary: For the basics...read this book
Review: This book discusses the design process overall and also briefly touches on usability tests and web surveys. More valuable is the second half of the book which breaks down different types of navigation systems (for Identity, Education, Shopping sites) and has some helpful hints as to what questions to ask accoding to which you are designing. Overall, a very "basics" kind of book. Many of the web examples she sites are no longer working links--good thing the book comes with a cd.
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