There is no singular User Experience

UX (User Experience) and Web site interface Design

I'm the type of person that likes to rely on a well thought-out primary navigation scheme.  Unfortunately, they are not always designed as such. However, I still find myself trying to logically navigate through tabs and lefthand navigation even when it's clear that they are not  serving me, the user, very well. 

I'm NOT the type of person that clicks on a Site Map link as soon as a page loads, or types a few words in the search field when I first get to a Web site's home page.  But, as a designer of Web sites, it's important to take into account all types of user behaviors.  There is no such thing as a singular user experience when you're dealing with a large, information-heavy site.

Related to this is also the comments in client meetings when we are reviewing designs.  "I don't like dropdown menus," was once a comment that I got from a VP when looking at some designs I'd prepared for a particularly large, content-heavy site. Be that as it may, the site ended up having dropdown menus on it.  It was my job as a designer to explain the difference between the subjective and objective when it comes to interface design. Everyone has their likes and dislikes when it comes to navigating around a site.  In this persons' case, I would peg them as "searcher" -- they demonstrated this behavior when showing a competitors' site later in the meeting.  Upon the home page loading, they typed a word in the search field and got to the page they wanted us to review that way.

Redundancy in navigation is simply more than making sure people "see" the links you want them to see.  It serves as a gateway to your key information for ALL types of users with all their different preferences. 

A couple things to keep in mind when implementing this:

1) Your primary navigation still matters.  Even though you're being redundant, logical, well-named main tabs are still crucial and server a large audience (including me).

2) Make sure your search WORKS.  You know what I mean.  Many out of the box text searches are simply awful, which explains why so many small sites use Google search on them.  For medium-size and larger sites, I'd suggest looking into Apache's Lucene, or one of Google's Enterprise offerings.  It makes a huge difference and serves an entire audience so much better.

3) Clean up your Site Map.  An attractive Site Map helps those that go there quickly to find the page they're looking for.  Having a Site Map is also good for your Search rankings, but I would suggest spending a few minutes cleaning it up and rearranging things so that it reads more like a table of contents of a book than the standard bulleted list.

4) Think outside your subjective experience. Ask your colleagues or friends to navigate a site and watch them do it.  Observe what they do.  Is it what you would do?  Try to put reasons behind why they were doing things the way they did.  Then, try it out: go to a Web site and try to find things on it a completely different way than you normally would.  Now, start doing it with your own designs.  Try navigating them in 2 different ways and see if they still hold up.