NN/g: five recurring problems with role-based navigation (Laubheimer, 2022)

Claim: NN/g identifies five recurring usability problems with role-based / audience-based navigation:

1. Users don't know which group to choose
2. Users identify with more than one audience group (the "multiple memberships" problem)
3. Users feel they're missing content in the categories they didn't pick
4. Labels are jargon ("OEMs" vs "Manufacturers" vs "Original Equipment") — terminology mismatch with the user's own self-description
5. Categories overlap or are non-exhaustive — users find themselves outside the taxonomy

Source: Page Laubheimer, NN/g, Aug 14, 2022 — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/audience-based-navigation/. See NN/g: audience-based navigation "will often degrade usability" (Laubheimer, Aug 14 2022) for the headline finding.

Confidence: Verified.

Practical test for Candid client work: before recommending audience-led IA, run these five against the client's actual buyer set. If three or more apply, switch to subject-based IA (industries + services as orthogonal axes) instead.