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A lot of new companies are cropping up that are touting the potential of HTML5 and that is a good thing but as I was exploring a site called blacknegative (because online we don’t capitalize anything anymore) I began to have a familiar feeling.  HTML5 opens up a lot of potential on how we interact with content and that is good, but like with any technological advancement - just because you can is not a reason to do something. Navigation should be intuitive and invisible like breathing. blacknegative does some nice work and showcases some interesting and cool ways content and navigation interact but their own menu drove me crazy.

When you have to start your site with an info graphic on how to navigate that should be your first clue. But then to animate that infographic in such a way as to make it more confusing is a problem. We want to click. We are taught to click. What is easier than click? Click AND swipe? Their own menu gives us the same problems intuitive dissonance. They provide a diagonal graphic bar that contains the contents but give us two other choices to navigate the contents all working differently. Clicking on stuff repeatedly shouting “what the fuck just happened” is not gameplay. Backspacing to double check you navigated where you intended to is not engagement with the content.  

Advertisers and designers has Skip Flash Intro taught us nothing? Get us to where we want to be fast and efficiently THEN dazzle us with bells and whistles.