Proposed navigation / menu change

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
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caughtatwork
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Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by caughtatwork » 21 July 15 3:39 pm

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6RUXq ... sp=sharing

A change to the design of the navigation / menu structure (see link).

Why change?
– Current navigation is confusing
– Does not allow for main functions of FIND and HIDE
– Does not support tablet / phone with no hover ability
– Menu system is not intuitive

What’s proposed
– Slide out menu with predominately single navigation level
– Find, Hide, My Profile (including favourites), dragonZone, Statistics, Toolbox, Forum, FAQ, Wiki, Support
– Link to pages for additional drill down options

Pros:
– Usable without hover
– Suitable for finger and mouse
– Growth through landing page content not additional navigation elements
– Makes page more responsive to screen size without full navigation tabs (subject to confirmation)
– Minor functional change, mainly useability

Cons
– Additional tap / click to get to lower level navigation
– Content “hidden” as it’s not visible without getting to sub pages
– Trial and error to find

What’s still to consider
– Subnavigation on some pages (cacher page, dragonZone, etc)
– Sitemap to see all navigation “at once”

I doubt there will ever be a perfect navigation solution to the Geocaching Australia site. Navigation is always the hardest part of any site. Getting the balance between minimal options to choose from, then "drilling down" is opposed by a lack of visibility as to "where you are going". Wide and deep navigation structures are too cumbersome and simple narrow navigation structures mean more "journey" to get where you are going by adding clicks.

The proposal here is to focus on FIND and HIDE with MY coming in 3rd. Then some other things of interest a little further down. Want to FIND a geocache, tap FIND and away you go.

There may be too many options on this landing page, but do we restrict options or offer everything we can? Do newbies need all of this stuff or should they only get a search function for locality / postcode or maybe just a map? Where do we start the map? Melbourne? Sydney? We can't use the internet to discover their location with great reliability, but it may be a great fallback.

There is also a weighing of what newbies want / need and what the more established geocacher needs. I want a lot of flexibility, so mey I'm not interested in the FIND, per se, just a way to get to a Query which I can create. Then there are geocachers who don't want all the complexity that the My Query offers and want more canned queries. Who knows.

The proposal is out there. I think at the end of the day this will proceed in one form or another. Looking for your feedback before we proceed and screw it up completely. Remember this is your site. I just do the programming and use it. You have to use it too, so speak up.

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oldfella
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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by oldfella » 21 July 15 7:26 pm

I adapt fairly quickly and I am not into code writing etc. My Thoughts are nut it out put it out for a trial and those of us who have been utilising GCA to our max give it a thrashing to get towards a subjective opinion.

Laighside Legends
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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Laighside Legends » 21 July 15 10:36 pm

Looks good! Can I ask for this though: only make the dragonZone stuff visible for those that have signed up to dragonZone! I get a lot of people ask "What's with all this dragon stuff, I just want to find a cache?!"

Another idea I had - not sure if it's do-able: On page 6 you have all those nice looking boxes - would it be possible to have the 5 most recent queries (and searches?) in the boxes so you don't always have to click though to the next page?
(I would also love to see the "Search for a Geocache" boxes appear on the home page!)

Also are the 2nd row of menus on the cacher page been changed to be more mobile phone friendly?

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caughtatwork
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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by caughtatwork » 22 July 15 9:23 am

Laighside Legends wrote:Looks good! Can I ask for this though: only make the dragonZone stuff visible for those that have signed up to dragonZone! I get a lot of people ask "What's with all this dragon stuff, I just want to find a cache?!"

Another idea I had - not sure if it's do-able: On page 6 you have all those nice looking boxes - would it be possible to have the 5 most recent queries (and searches?) in the boxes so you don't always have to click though to the next page?
(I would also love to see the "Search for a Geocache" boxes appear on the home page!)

Also are the 2nd row of menus on the cacher page been changed to be more mobile phone friendly?
The dragonZone stuff is likely to stay. As it's a unique component of Geocaching Australia in that there is no game like this in the world I would like to keep this prominent. If it's hidden away, then no-one knows it's there and no-one signs up. Bringing the game to a higher prominence encourages new signups.

I'm not sure what you mean regarding the searches. The queries are canned. i.e. They are the same results each time. The searches, based on what we collect in regards to search terms are unique. i.e. There is no commonality between the last 5, 10, 50 or 100 searches criteria. They are all different.

We haven't done the home page yet. I expect that some of the search will appear on the new home page and will be less "leaderboard". I don't want to clutter the home page with all the search boxes, but there should be room for one or two. Which ones do you suggest?

Subnavigation (which what I suspect you're talking about), is not part of this proposal.
What’s still to consider
- Subnavigation on some pages (cacher page, dragonZone, etc)
- Sitemap to see all navigation “at once”

Thanks for your feedback.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Just a cacher » 22 July 15 11:59 am

"The dragonZone stuff is likely to stay."

Bugger. I don't play the dragon game, and I don't understand it, so every reference to it just adds to my overall confusion. I hoped it would be short term, like the gnome race, etc.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by fluffyfish » 22 July 15 1:36 pm

Regarding map zoom, would like to zoom in to my home coords (with sufficient to see a wide area around it). Not sure of hte zoom level but happy to have your choice on this.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by caughtatwork » 22 July 15 3:18 pm

fluffyfish wrote:Regarding map zoom, would like to zoom in to my home coords (with sufficient to see a wide area around it). Not sure of hte zoom level but happy to have your choice on this.
Interesting conundrum here. If you have no country / state selection setting, then zooming into the map based on your home co-ords is dandy. If you have chosen (say) QLD as your state of interest and map it, it will display QLD caches, but the map is zoomed to your home co-ords. i.e. You see nothing and don't know why.

I like the idea, I'm not sure how to implement it.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by ziggiau » 22 July 15 6:24 pm

Just a cacher wrote:Bugger. I don't play the dragon game, and I don't understand it, so every reference to it just adds to my overall confusion. I hoped it would be short term, like the gnome race, etc.
Same.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by caughtatwork » 22 July 15 8:27 pm

There's a game square on the cache page and one navigation item for dragonZone. Yet there's more negative feedback on that than anything regarding the new navigation proposal. Let's focus on the navigation in this discussion and the negativity about the game can be taken somewhere else.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Sol de Lune » 22 July 15 10:43 pm

ziggiau wrote:
Just a cacher wrote:Bugger. I don't play the dragon game, and I don't understand it, so every reference to it just adds to my overall confusion. I hoped it would be short term, like the gnome race, etc.
Same.
It's the easiest game to play. Sign up for a clan and find GCA caches...the scoring looks after itself. You don't need to do anything else......just find a GCA cache and log it. It adds a new dimension to the whole caching experience and I certainly hope it's here to stay.

If you want to get/play strategic, that may take a bit to get the hang of, but you'll get there.

(For JAC......you and BB play all the GCA games and I was surprised you weren't in this one.) :Cerberus

Apologies for being off topic.....

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Richary
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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Richary » 22 July 15 11:07 pm

Just a cacher wrote:"The dragonZone stuff is likely to stay."

Bugger. I don't play the dragon game, and I don't understand it, so every reference to it just adds to my overall confusion. I hoped it would be short term, like the gnome race, etc.
Just ignore it then, it won't affect you finding caches. If you join a clan it changes nothing except you get some points for your clan whenever you find a GCA cache. If you don't want to do anything more like adding points to caches or trying to claim a zone (council area) then don't. None of it affects your ability to find GCA caches whether you are part of it or not.

It's an extra some people want to play, I've signed up but it hasn't really changed my caching behaviour at all except for adding a few points to the odd trig to claim it for my clan. It's not a game like the gnomes where there is a winner at the end for most km or most moves etc. So if you just want to find caches ignore the whole thing :)

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Laighside Legends » 23 July 15 9:01 am

caughtatwork wrote:I'm not sure what you mean regarding the searches. The queries are canned. i.e. They are the same results each time. The searches, based on what we collect in regards to search terms are unique. i.e. There is no commonality between the last 5, 10, 50 or 100 searches criteria. They are all different.
I have 20 something different queries set up on GCA. The majority of these I only use a couple times a year. Then there are 2 or 3 which I use several times a week. It would be nice for these 2 or 3 to show up in the query box on page 6.
I don't use the routes feature so I don't know what the equivalent feature for this is (if it exists).
And zones I use via a query so again I'm not exactly sure here.
And on name/coord/postcode/ect. search it probably doesn't make any sense.

With regards to dragonZone, I think one of the big problems this site has with navigation is that there is just so much stuff (which is good for us experienced players) that it overwhelms the newcomers. The way I see it is that something that newcomers don't need to see and can be taken out is dragonZone. Nothing against the game, it's just not the place to start with GCA (or geocaching in general).

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by caughtatwork » 23 July 15 9:15 am

Thanks, now I see your meaning about your My Query. How can I determine your most used query to add to the My Query box? I could just add the "first" 5 or so and you could force things into the top of the list alphabetically of I could find all those which start with * indicating it should be added to the list. Remember you can also add a My Query to your favourites, so they would be available with even fewer clicks as all your favourites would be available in the slide out menu.

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by Laighside Legends » 29 July 15 11:27 pm

caughtatwork wrote:Remember you can also add a My Query to your favourites, so they would be available with even fewer clicks as all your favourites would be available in the slide out menu.
I didn't realise this was possible to do - it probably does make the top 5 idea a bit redundant...

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Re: Proposed navigation / menu change

Post by ziggiau » 31 July 15 11:58 am

Sol de Lune wrote:
ziggiau wrote:
Just a cacher wrote:Bugger. I don't play the dragon game, and I don't understand it, so every reference to it just adds to my overall confusion. I hoped it would be short term, like the gnome race, etc.
Same.
It's the easiest game to play. Sign up for a clan and find GCA caches...the scoring looks after itself. You don't need to do anything else......just find a GCA cache and log it. It adds a new dimension to the whole caching experience and I certainly hope it's here to stay.
Oh, I've signed up to a clan but I have no GCA caches near me so I'd never get a chance to participate, and therefore it has little meaning to me on the menu. I'm not poo pooing the game, just that I can't enjoy it in the way others do.

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