Mystery Meat Navigation: An Introduction

Wikipedia's defilnition (partial):

Mystery meat navigation (also known as MMN) is a disparaging term coined in 1998 by author and web designer Vincent Flanders to describe a visually attractive but concurrently inefficient, confusing, or abstruse user interface, usually one that is Internet-based. Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality.

The epithet "mystery meat" refers to the meat products often served in American public school cafeterias whose forms have been so thoroughly reprocessed that their exact types can no longer be identified by their appearances: like them, the methods of MMN are clear to the producer but baffling to the consumer. 

MMN is very seductive — it looks cool and it's used on sites that win design awards. Because there's no long strings of text, MMN makes the page look "cleaner" because there's more white space.

Toto

Using human butts as navigation brings new meaning to Mystery Meat Navigation <grin>.

Toto (2:05)

OXO

An early example of Mystery Meat Navigation from late 1999 or early 2000.

OXO (2:02)

Mathew Mahon

Stupid Mystery Meat Navigation. Oops. "Stupid" is an unnecessary modifier.

Mathew Mahon (1:18)

Crumpler Bags

The #2 worst Mystery Meat Navigation site for 2006.

Crumpler Bags (1:15)

Diners Club

The 10th worst web site of 2006,

Diners Club (0:42)

University of Calgary

They fixed the site. This is what it used to look like.

University of Calgary (0:45)