Clear Entry Points

Example of the Clear Entry Points UX pattern.

Problem

It may not be obvious what people can or should do when starting an application or visiting a site.

Solution

Give people a set of clear entry points into the application or Web site based on their most common tasks or destinations.

Context

You can identify or already have a known set of top tasks or destinations that apply to most people.
A significant number of users will be first time users or infrequent users.

Rationale

Without clear entry points, new or infrequent users can feel lost immediately upon opening an application or site. By guiding people with clear entry points, you take the mental burden off of them to figure out what they can or should do.

This pattern only works if you have or can discover a set of the most common tasks or destinations for a large segment of your target audience. If you can’t do this, the pattern actually causes more trouble because it gets in the way and doesn’t really guide people to what they want to do.

It’s important that most of your users be new or infrequent because, unless these are the only relevant tasks, regular users may find that clear entry points get in the way. This is an extension of the last issue—if the clear entry points aren’t actually guiding most people to the tasks or destinations they need, they just get in the way and even add confusion.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that “it’s obvious” what people should do. Many Web sites, especially, throw everything they have at people on their home pages—the main entry point for a lot of sites. Homepages often end up being a smorgasbord of everything the organization behind it has to offer, and people are left confused and not knowing what to do or where to go. Clear entry points can help almost any Web site by hiding the internal complexities and driving them to the main destinations.

Implementation

The trick with this pattern is successfully identifying the top tasks or destinations. If you used user-centric design, you should have already identified these as the tasks that address the key goals for your users. Use that information to design your clear entry points.

If you didn’t use user-centric design, you need to do some research, probably both internally and externally, to determine the key tasks and destinations. If your app or site already exists, looking at usage logs is a great source. You can also usually distill key tasks even from functional specs, but you should try to validate those with users or at least business stakeholders to ensure that the tasks you’re selecting are in line with the key goals that the application or site serves.

Once you’ve nailed down your key tasks, you should consider how they need to be presented. If you have more than a handful, you should think about how you might group them visually, but remember, this should not be a replica of your main navigation—it really needs to be key tasks.

Display the tasks very clearly and centrally on the starting view of your app or site. Be sure to phrase them in terms of what the user is trying to accomplish, not in terms of any fancy or branded terminology like tool names. If you can communicate the task in a few words, that is ideal, but you probably should supplement names with helpful descriptions that make it abundantly clear what people can accomplish by choosing that task or destination.

It is best not to just make these be like trap doors, where suddenly people are dropped into the middle of your solution structure. The destination they reach by choosing the task should be clearly connected to the task; this is a good start to a Wizard, but it doesn’t have to be wizard-based—just make the connection between the selected task and the view they reach by selecting the task.

If there are sub-tasks that people can jump directly into, you can consider having those be revealed when the main task is selected, but remember, this should not be a full menu or navigational scheme.

It’s good practice to visually emphasize the most common tasks over the less common ones. This way most people are drawn to the most common tasks, but you can still have less common ones there for those who need them.

This main entry point view should not be surrounded by the usual navigational structure or ancillary tools/information. Hide those away to keep the focus on the entry points.

Help Me Get There

Infragistics has some tools that can jumpstart your efforts to implement this pattern. Broken down by technology, they are as follows.

ASP.NET

You could use the WebDialogWindow to overlay a clear entry points dialog if your solution is more application-like than informational/navigational.

JavaServer Faces

You can easily implement this pattern using NetAdvantage for JSF’s link component combined with the corepanel grid component. You can also use NetAdvantage’s themes to help with styling. See an example here.

Examples

This is another example from Adobe Fireworks CS4. They offer a few clear entry points--open recent, create new PNG, extend, and info/help links. Note they also let you indicate not to show that again, and of course you can just get busy in other ways, if you prefer that.

http://quince.infragistics.com/10ys