"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 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. Johanna Drucker argues that 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, but the book's graphic devices continue to act as "narrative scaffolding" throughout the reading experience. Where an event happens in a book, whether it is page 20 or 200, guides the reader's interpretation in relation to previous events and anticipated events. But, Drucker also makes the case that graphic devices "model the discourse field in ways that constraint or engineer the narrative possibilities for a reader." A book's navigation structure supports the chronology, causality and narrative momentum of reading. In a website or database narrative, the user is usually offered an array of choices and paths. Narrative is not a structure within the text, but rather an effect of navigation. The Graphical User Interface offers macro and micro views of content and content relations that stimulate a user's "urge for meaning, closure or resolution of an experience."

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