Thank you to all of you who have been using Navigating Cancer and sending us your thoughts & suggestions on how to make it an even better resource for cancer patients and their loved ones. Over the last several months we’ve been listening to your feedback and making incremental changes to improve the experience. This new change is a little more noticeable so I wanted to explain some of the changes here in more detail.
With so many features available to patients, one common theme we’ve heard from members is that it can be confusing to navigate the different areas of the site, or remember how to access a particular feature. We’ve made some adjustments to the navigation design to help you more easily find your way around the site, and quickly recognize which section of the site you’re using. Here’s a quick summary of the key changes to the Navigating Cancer site this week:
- More room for your information on every page. In order to provide more room on the page for your information, we have reduced the size of the site “header,” the area that’s at the top of every page by over 30%. To do this, we’ve removed the tabs that used to be at the top of each page (the “My Organizer” and “Cancer Resources” tabs). Now, you can just as easily switch between your personal information (your Navigating Cancer “Home”) and the cancer articles & community (“Cancer Resources”) using links at the top of each page. This allows us to re-use the space that was occupied by the tabs to present you with more useful information.
Easier to navigate and know where you are. To help provide a clearer indication of where you are in the Navigating Cancer site, we’ve color-coded the navigation links according to feature area. It’s now more obvious at a glance when you’re looking at your health records, versus community groups or discussions. As you’ll see, health record links are shown in blue, with a blue banner across the top of all health records pages. Community pages have a green banner above the page, and are accessed with the green links in the left navigation.
- “My Organizer” is now “Home.” The first page you see when you sign in to Navigating Cancer gives you a quick summary of recent activity on the site, a mini-calendar and links to all of your health records and other information. Previously, you would get to this “Dashboard” page by clicking the “My Organizer” tab. Despite our confusing naming (or maybe because of it!) most of you simply referred to this page as your “home” page on Navigating Cancer. And that’s now what we call it too — the link near the top of every page that says “Home” is the new way to get back to your Navigating Cancer home page and all of your personal information.
We’re working hard to continually improve the site and to make it as easy and as useful as possible to help you in your cancer journey. As always, if you have a question or want to pass on a suggestion, don’t hesitate to send us a message.
Thanks –
Navigating Cancer Team