Abstract
In spite of the radical enhancement of Web technologies, many users still continue to experience severe difficulties in navigating Web systems. One way to reduce the navigation difficulties is to provide context information that explains the current situation of Web users. In this study, we empirically examined the effects of 2 types of context information, structural and temporal context. In the experiment, we evaluated the effectiveness of the contextual navigation aids in 2 different types of Web systems, an electronic commerce system that has a well-defined structure and a content dissemination system that has an ill-defined structure. In our experiment, participants answered a set of postquestionnaires after performing several searching and browsing tasks. The results of the experiment reveal that the 2 types of contextual navigation aids significantly improved the performance of the given tasks regardless of different Web systems and different task types. Moreover, context information changed the users' navigation patterns and increased their subjective convenience of navigation. This study concludes with implications for understanding the users' searching and browsing patterns and for developing effective navigation systems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 193-217 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2000 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the Korean Institute of Information Technology Assessment grant No. 99–10.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Human Factors and Ergonomics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Computer Science Applications
