A multi-layered cake

After nine mouse clicks, I finally arrived at the "Leave and TDY" calendar sitting on our shared portal.  Getting to the same document used to take two clicks.  I suddenly had this vison of a chocolate tower truffle cake from The Cheesecake Factory.  You know the one I'm talking about--many, many layers of chocolate cake with scrumptuous chocolate icing sandwiched between.  I thought how very similar locating just about anything on the shared portal is to this cake--layer upon layer upon layer.  And then I thought about the four-click rule (well, maybe it's the three-click rule but I'm giving our IT folks a break!) in which, if after the fourth click you haven't found what you're looking for, the website developer should be hung from the nearest yardarm (that's naval-speak for getting an attitude adjustment).  I thought about how I'm a captive audience and if my workplace (I work for the guv-mint and I am here to help you!) were a business, we'd be out of business because no one wants to drill and drill and drill just to find information that should be easily accessed. 

Once I finished updating the calendar, my thoughts returned to the layered shared portal and how aggravating its navigation is.  While I realize that some layering may be unavoidable, planning access and minimizing layers is crucial to building an effective site.  If the site is difficult to use or the navigation cumbersome, people often will look somewhere else.  I know we have all experienced websites that were simply too busy.   I dare say we didn't bookmark those sites!

The same consideration for website design must be applied to online course development.  Whether or not the instructor is involved with the design, the online coure must generate use and facilitate students' desire to learn.  Instructors don't necessarily need to know how to write code, but they should be able to communicate a design to developer that coincides with their pedagogy.  And instuctors should be able to test the course to ensure the design and content presentation meets their requirements. 

If the design is begun with the end in mind, I thinking that instead of clicking and clicking and clicking and wondering how far down the file tree I'll have to go to find my information, I may just have enough time for a slice of that cake.