Luke W. on Amazon’s Tabbed Interface

Luke Wroblewski has written a nice, picture-filled post showing the evolution of Amazon’s tabbed interface. Boy, do they have scalability issues, or what?

This mention of Amazon dovetails nicely with our recent talk about popularity. I say popularity is mostly evidence of attention, and isn’t so bad. Others see it in a more negative light. What Amazon has shown us, I think, is that (at least on the product page) popularity as input to navigation can be very useful, as demonstrated in both user reviews and the “people who shopped for this also shopped for that” feature. I know I often search out what is popular before I make a decision about buying something. Do you?