Tree view navigation, good idea?

Question

I'm thinking of using a tree view for page navigation in my web application, similar to Windows Explorer. There are a lot of things for administrators to configure in the application so I figured listing all links in a single page in tree form would keep things organized. Related page links are grouped in a "folder", and all folders will show closed initially.

Obviously, this page is for administrators only, so they'd be provided with some training. That being said, is this a good design from user's point of view? Do you see any usability or potential implementation issues?

Answer 1

The best answer involves empirical evidence. A yes or no answer could really vary based on the specific task and your intended audience. Try doing a simple 5 minute usability test with your users. Draw out your page layouts on paper and have a couple of users pretend to use the site (see Paper Protyping). Give them a few simple tasks to complete using your interface and observe what they do.

If they get confused or have trouble with the concept, then it's probably best to find another way to provide navigation.

Answer 2

It totally depends on how your users are using your site. If they're often jumping from one part of the site to a completely different, unrelated place in the site, a tree may be the best way to let them quickly find that "other page" they were looking for.

However, for the vast majority of websites I've ever seen or used, I'd prefer to find what I'm looking for either via Search functionality, or by links on the page I'm looking at that lead me to related data.