I've started to notice that most of what I know about the web, I actually learned standing on a racetrack.
Six years ago I was cutting signs and setting graphics on a temporary circuit, working out how a stranger — in a hurry, ticket in hand — gets from the parking lot to their seat without ever having to stop and think about it. That is wayfinding. It turns out to be most of web navigation, just with a different budget.
The other half of my schooling was motion. Years in Flash and ActionScript taught me that movement isn't decoration. Movement is a sentence. A thing that slides in from the left is telling you where it came from. A thing that fades is telling you it was never really the point.
Put the two together and navigation stops being a menu and starts being a path. A call to action stops being a button you sprinkle around the page and becomes a door you place, on purpose, where someone is already looking.
Lately I've been watching heat maps to test my instincts, and mostly they humble me. People don't read the page I worked so carefully on. They scan it, in a shape, and the shape is fairly predictable, and if the one thing that matters isn't sitting on it, then for them it may as well not be there. The data doesn't care how much I loved the layout.
The goal is simple, which is not the same as easy. Help the person get where they're going. Don't leave them wandering. A site that keeps someone lost isn't really engaging anyone — it's just a maze with nicer type.