Question

You are in charge of designing a menu tree for navigating 1,250 books in a digital library. Present an argument of whether the menu should have larger depth (number of levels) or breadth (number of items per level).

Answer 1

Answer:

The best way to know whether menu should have a larger depth or breadth is to view the extreme.

Explanation:

The best way to examine menu depth versus breadth is to view the extremes first. Wouldn't it be rather cumbersome to have 1 menu with a long list of 1,250 books on it? How weird would it be to have 1,250 menus each having 1 level deep?Grouping of items naturally to reduce into “smaller sizes” may follow how books are classified now, for instance, Dewey Decimal System, e.g. History books, fiction, non-fiction, dictionaries, etc. Well, remember when you are building a book web site, you may chooseto classify the books in a manner that can increase sales, e.g. Top twenty best sellers, irrespective of their classification, types or for business reasons.

This is easily discussed in the classroom with menu tree diagrams at a white-board to ease editing. This author often emphasizes there is not a perfect correct answer, pointing out that a good and healthy design discussions with user-friendly testing will yield a more preferred solution.