New Media Picks of the Week - Poor Website Navigation

Today I discovered that there's a term for poor site navigation. According to Wikipedia:

Mystery meat navigation (also abbreviated MMN) is a term coined and popularized by author, web designer, and usability analyst Vincent Flanders to describe user interfaces (especially in websites) in which it is inordinately difficult for users to discern the destinations of navigational hyperlinks—or, in severe cases, even to determine where the hyperlinks are. The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them.

This post is dedicated to providing examples of MMN. Here's what not to do on your website.

The Connext Project wants us to "see the music," but it's difficult to discern where we'll see it and what music we'll see because of the site design. The grid of links on the homepage also makes us think there's alot more content on the site than there actually is.

I'm assuming Leo Burnett is an advertising agency, though it's not entirely clear from their site, which uses Flash! Flash can be very visually exciting for the user/view, but on this site, the use of Flash interferes with clear and effective site navigation. And ironically, the tab at the bottom of the page that reads "Feeling Lost" provides a menu when you hover the mouse over it, though that menu disappears if you try to click on any of the items listed.

Texelate is the web site of a web designer, which I found surprising. The issue on this site is the number of menus. There's one at the top of the homepage, another on the right margin for the site's Blog and additional links in the center of the page. Admittedly, I prefer a left hand nav bar, probably because I'm left-handed. Regardless, the format and design of the homepage also made it difficult for me to decide where to start and what to read and to even clearly determine what serves this guy offered.