I hope this is the proper channel for providing feedback.
I favor Option 1, for this reason: by attempting to provide
as much information on one page as possible, it is more
straightforward to inform novice user's initial navigation
choices.
With the linear flow of frames in the carousel Option 2,
you place a cognitive load on the user to remember what was
presented in previous frames of the carousel, before they
are informed enough to make their ultimate choice.
In fact, they've already spent one or more clicks spinning the
carousel without yet having arrived at their desired (we hope!)
content. And they may have to navigate *back* to a previous
carousel frame to get to it.
Of course, this presumes the user is trying to get to a particular
link, when in fact they are being educated as to which links are
available, in which case the carousel view may offer a better
organizational metaphor, and reduce learning curve rather than
incur cognivite load. I.E. it aids the discovery process at
the expense of navigational efficiency.
I would like to forward a random user inteface feedback comment
from a project recently:
"Could you give it a more trendy user interface, like Macintosh?"
