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This article was taken from Jakob Neilsen's website.
...because people are not frogs.
If we had been frogs with eyes sitting on the side of the head,
the story might have been different,
but humans have their eyes smack in the front of their face, looking straight out.
Humans are much better at navigating a flat 2D world than a complex 3D world.
We evolved on a flat landscape (the world is really flat) and so we are
optimised for 2D navigation.
Don't use 3D for navigation (unless your navigation space really is 3D).
Most information spaces have many more than three dimensions,
so the one extra dimension you get going from 2D to 3D probably isn't worth the complexity.
Don't use gimmicks such as shopping malls or streets as navigation metaphors;
by doing so you put your interface in the way of the goal (which is to get around).
If we could navigate in the physical world by hyperlinks
(i.e. by pressing a button which would take us immediately to its stated destination),
we wouldn't bother with walking, driving, flying... so why should we do it in a virtual world?
Use 3D when you have a real physical object that must be seen in its solid form.
However, sometimes 2D schematics can be better than a 3D object.
Video (with sound) provides an extra dimension without navigational overhead
because the sound is synched to the video.
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