Phil Oye

About the Project

MAYA is a product-design and development consultancy that specializes in “taming the complexity” of technology. As a company that does product design, it was critical that MAYA’s website represented their commitment to usability and design. The site had to be clean, well organized, and easy to navigate.

My Role on the Project

The team of two included myself doing the interaction design and information architecture, and Ken Tanaka as the visual designer and project manager.

The solution

MAYA wanted to communicate three ideas: their process, their expertise, and their portfolio/client list. This determined the main areas of the website. “What We Do”, “Who We Are”, and “Our Portfolio”.

While the organization of the site was hardly earth-shattering, I was always proud of the navigation scheme. This was late 1996 and a left-side navigation bar was the state-of-the-art. I wanted to find some way to integrate breadcrumbs and main section navigation, without detracting from the site with too much navigation.

The main sections appear on all pages.

After clicking on a section, the path is shown.

After clicking on a link in the content area of the page, the path is extended. Lateral navigation is available to the previous and next item.

Amazingly enough, the site was still up and relatively unchanged for five years. Alas, MAYA finally redesigned it.