"Navigation is never natural; it is always the expression of a set of cultural assumptions and controls; it is a form of telling that sometimes carries semantic content, but always structures its expression within the constraints of presentation."
– Johanna Drucker (Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation)

An interface presents semantic or narrative units along with graphical devices that provide legible markers for navigation and for establishing hierarchy. In a website, links, headers, date and time stamps, navigation bars, borders, margins, gutters separating boxes are often not content in themselves, but rather do the work of framing and ordering content. According to Johanna Drucker, graphic devices are integral to reading and understanding all narrative texts. One begins a book by looking over the table of contents, assessing the length of chapters and noting the page count. This quick way of taking stock of a book's structure does much cognitive work to prepare for reading. The book's graphic devices continue to act as "narrative scaffolding" throughout the reading experience. Drucker also makes the case that graphic devices assist the reader in the production of narrative by modeling "the discourse field in ways that constraint or engineer the narrative possibilities for a reader." A book's spatial and navigation structure supports the chronology, causality and narrative momentum of reading.  In a commercial website, the user is treated with an omniscient point of view usually offered as an array of choices and paths. Narrative is not a structure within the text, but rather emerges as an effect of navigation. The Graphical User Interface offers macro and micro views of content and content relations that can stimulate a user's "urge for meaning, closure or resolution of an experience."

Chris Ware's unique diagrammatic style of storytelling demonstrates the role of graphic devices as tools for the reader to co-produce a narrative...

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