Skip to content

Workbook Navigation and UX Standard

Purpose

A customer should never feel lost inside a product. This standard covers how a customer finds their way around a workbook, independent of the visual styling covered in workbook-visual-design-standard.md.

Start Here tab

Every product with more than a couple of tabs should include a Start Here tab that customers land on by default (the workbook should open to this tab). It should state, briefly:

  • What the tool does and who it's for.
  • The basic order of operations (e.g., "1. Enter your info on the Inputs tab. 2. Check the Dashboard. 3. Print the Report tab if needed.").
  • A way to get to every other relevant tab from this one — either a manual table of contents with hyperlinks or, where practical, a navigation area with links.

For products with enough tabs that horizontal tab-scrolling becomes a burden, include a navigation aid: a short table of contents on the Start Here tab (or a dedicated Navigation area) with hyperlinks to each major tab. Each tab, in turn, should offer an easy way back (a "Back to Start" link or equivalent), so customers are never more than one click from reorienting themselves.

Preferred implementation: collapsible per-tab Contents nav

Where the standard above is implemented as a per-tab nav (not just a single Start Here list), use this concrete layout so it's consistent across products:

  • Reserve columns A:C on every tab as a navigation margin. Columns A and C stay narrow (accent/buffer only); column B holds a "Contents" list — every visible tab name, each hyperlinked to that tab's main content anchor cell. Hidden helper/lookup tabs (e.g. a dropdown-source "Lists" sheet) are excluded from the list. Real tab content starts in column D, so the nav margin never competes with data.
  • Group columns A:C (Data > Outline > Group) so the whole nav collapses to a thin strip with one click, and expands the same way — this is what makes the nav available on every tab without permanently costing screen space.
  • The row for the currently-open tab is visually distinguished from the other list entries (e.g. a filled/highlighted state instead of the plain list style), so a customer glancing at the nav can tell where they are, not just where they can go.
  • The "Contents" header and any full-column accent treatment (color, gradient, etc.) are implementation styling, not a fixed requirement — they should follow whatever the product's current visual design is, and must not rely on a real cell merge (see the no-merged-cells structural principle in workbook-architecture-standard.md); use Excel's Center Across Selection alignment for any centered/spanning header text instead.
  • This is a layout decision, not just a Start Here feature: it applies to every tab in the workbook, not only the landing tab, so a customer can jump to any other tab (or collapse the nav out of the way) without first navigating back to Start Here. A tab that is itself the orientation/landing page (e.g. Start Here / Read Me) may omit the nav if it doesn't need to send customers elsewhere and the nav margin would fight the tab's own layout — document the exception in the product's specification if used.
  • Reference implementation: products/llc-accounting-tracker/generator/helpers.py (add_contents_nav) in the devonside-labs implementation repo — reuse that helper's approach (or the helper itself) rather than re-deriving the pattern per product. The reference implementation's specific colors/gradients are that product's current styling choice, not a mandated palette — see workbook-visual-design-standard.md and the unresolved venture visual identity (../strategy/brand-and-positioning.md).

Consistent tab ordering

Tabs should follow a consistent left-to-right order across products in this venture, loosely following the recommended pattern in workbook-architecture-standard.md: orientation first, then configuration, then inputs, then outputs (dashboard/reports), then reference/calculation/archive material last. Consistency across products reduces the relearning cost for a customer who buys more than one Digital Products tool.

Clear labeling

  • Tab names should be short, specific, and free of internal jargon (e.g., "Dashboard" rather than "DASH_v3_final").
  • Section headers within a tab should describe what the section is for, not just restate the tab name.
  • Avoid unexplained abbreviations in customer-facing labels.

Minimal clicks to core tasks

The core task of a product (entering data and seeing a result) should take as few navigation steps as possible. As a rough guideline: from opening the workbook, a customer should be able to reach the primary input area within one click/tab-switch, and the primary output (dashboard or report) within two. Products with justified higher complexity may exceed this, but the specification should note why.

Report an issue about this page