Understanding Navigation Flows

3.9 Understanding Navigation Flows

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Number 8, Navigation flow, well what is a navigation flow? Well navigation flow is a process of creating, analysing and implementing how the process will interact with the user, it actually tells the reader where a person would go from point A to point B to point c while choosing different options this particular knowledge is actually needed by the development team later on to join all the different screens of the platform. Navigation flow is the last point in the UX journey at least the first step of the UX journey.

So after navigation flow the UI designer starts making the screens for each of the processes that the navigation flow is speaking about. Once those processes are done the design along with the navigation flow is taken to the developer which is then developed through different processes.

So, what are the importance of navigation flow, well some of the advantages of navigation flow is it allows the user to interact with the different features of the product, it actually tells the reader what the user would do while encountering a particular problem, it tells the user that at what stage the user has what all choices.

I will give you a small example, let’s think of a payment process, if your payment is successful a thank you screen comes up and then the thank you screen gives you the option to go back to your home or go back to your profile but if your payment fails then a payment fails screen comes up and that particular screen takes you to retry a payment or my cart remember in both the cases it comes out from the result of same action, here that action means the payment so the navigation flows actually tell the UI designer and then the developer at what stage the users have what all choices.

It also empowers the users in this way because it allows the user to have more than one choices, hence the user would always feel that they are in control over their environment and in this case the digital environment. Well it increases trust and also provides credibility to the product because if I as a user if I know where I can go from whichever point I would be more comfortable than anything else.

Lastly it enhances an user’s understanding, so a good navigation flow would always keep the user informed about where that particular user is? At what stage how can that particular user go back and they would go back to which stage? If they go forward they will go forward to which stage? Navigation flow actually creates a lot of different types of triggers which allow the users or rather prompt the user to take a particular action.

Now, next we are going to actually see an example of navigation flow and before that we will see different components that are used to create navigation flow. So navigation flow is actually very simple, we create, we create a box… a diamond shaped and a circle and we use these three boxes to showcase what our thought process is as UX designers so the box is mostly used as normal CTA, CTA by the way means call to action button, for example your buy now, shop now, know more any button that is clickable is actually called a call to action button. Diamond shape are mainly used to denote radio buttons, radio buttons are this or that buttons and circles are actually used to show category headings, sub headings, anything that commands all the features of that particular page, but these things vary from one person to another, so please feel free to create your own order and use whichever shape you want to use.

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In the next slide we are actually going to see a live example of a navigation flow, so here we have a navigation flow,

 so there are two navigation flows here one is sign up and second one is sign in, so in this particular case if you notice carefully the users are given two options or the sign up process, the user can actually go for a sign up process or the user can avail the automatic sign up. The automatic sign up is very simple, the automatic sign up is the third party sign up so the moment you click on sign me up via google or sign me up via facebook they will take you to your google account take your permission and create an account based on your credentials that is there in the google or facebook account.

In the manual sign up they first ask for your name, then they will ask for your email id, then they will ask for your phone number, from the email id and the phone number they will actually send you an OTP or one time password, now this one time password will go to both your email id and phone number, when you punch in your OTP if it is success then will tell you to write a password for this particular platform and confirm the password. Once the password and confirm password matches you are signed up and if the OTP is not really working if you are kind of punching in wrong OTP or did not really get a text message or mail which has your OTP a prompt will always come up asking you if you want to resend the OTP the moment you click on resend your OTP, the OTP comes to your devices i.e. to your phone or email id. So this would continuously happen until and unless you actually key in a successful OTP. It depends on you whether you want a four digit OTP or a six digit OTP.

The next is a sign in process, the easier one is an automatic sign in process, if you have an account which is from your google like I explained you can always sign using your google account. If you don’t if you have actually done a manual sign up then you require to actually enter user id then password and if your password and user id is correct you are signed in but what if you forget your user id, I am sure that is something that we suffer on a regular basis and we don’t really realize on the back end of it what are the challenges that a business actually face when you forget your user id or password.

So if you forget your password or user id you are always the system will ask your phone number or email id, if your phone number and email id is there in the system’s database then they will send you a new OTP once you key in that OTP you can ask for I mean you can get a new password. If you forget your password you would have to do the same thing, you would have to enter your email id and if your email id and phone number are correct they would send you an OTP on keying the right OTP you would be taken to the new password generation page, once you generate your new password and confirm your password you are done, you can again sign in.

But if you remember very carefully in the sign up process they never really asked for an user id so what is a user id so if you can see the green circle on the side your email id becomes your user id so, if you forget your user id which means you have forgotten which email you have used or the email id which you have used to access this particular platform, in that case the system only ask for your phone number. So as an UX designer who is actually creating these navigation flows it is very important to look at all the exceptions to the rule, to look at all the places where a user can go wrong and make sure you have a solution for every single problem and every single failure. Now please go ahead and actually create a navigation flow for your topic.

Finally we come to the discussion time, click on the discussion button below and connect to fellow learners. I am really curious to hear your take on UX design and research. It is also important for you to learn and understand what others have to say about UX design and research.

( video duration- 10 minutes 54 seconds)