Trend in design - TOTI (Summary)

[Eric Rumsey]

In response to posting by Louis Rosenfeld on Sept 24 (appended below) ...

I agree that pure TOTI may not always be the best approach. Looking at our
own library home page ...
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/home.html
we use TOTI for some of the section headings, but it's not appropriate for
others, which do better with text descriptions.

For the headings that have TOTI links under them, though, I think the links
are actually at least as descriptive as non-link description would be -
e.g. For the section heading "Basic Information," how better to tell the
user what's there than by listing some links from the section: Hours,
Check-out policies, Location, E-mail Reference?

For original posting and links to TOTI sites -
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/design/toti.html


*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *
Eric Rumsey, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52242
<eric-rumsey at uiowa.edu>
319-335-9875 (voice), 319-335-9897 (fax)

>After reviewing the example sites, I think TOTI has value for many cases.
>
[snip]
>
>But I'm not sure I'd ever apply a pure version of this architecture for a
>site that has new users who aren't clear what the site is there for;
>descriptions of links are good at providing context for links and can help
>illuminate the site's mission to new users.
>
<lou at argus-inc.com>