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| Navigational Aids Improve Search Experience |
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posted by Editor on Monday December 17, @11:57AM
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This paper in First Monday shows that users of search engines with navigational aids perform better than they do with traditional search engines. Rather than simply dumping search results in a single, scrollable list, these systems provide contextual information that establish a sense of location (particularly spatial context to help users decide which trail to follow next), and temporal context that gives an indication of the navigation history. The authors developed a search and navigation engine called NavZone that incorporates several navigational aids into its user interface based on the concept of a user trail (see screenshot). In a usability test, 96% of the subjects chose NavZone over Google as their preferred search engine, even though most of the users were not familiar with NavZone or its user interface.
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Although mainstream search engines such as AltaVista, Google, and Yahoo are successful at directing users to specific Web sites, they do little to help users find detailed information on the sites themselves. This is because most search engines lack any form of navigational assistance that can guide users through their information seeking process. Rather, the current navigational practice is to select links through a combination of inspecting highlighted link text, clicking on the back and forward buttons, and scanning the history list. Due to the limited horizon that these tools present, users are often guessing which link to follow next without any certainty of whether they are heading in the "right direction".
To deal with this shortcoming, the authors developed a search and navigation engine called NavZone that incorporates several navigational aids into its user interface based on the concept of a user trail (see screenshot). To prove the effectiveness of their approach, they conducted a usability study that compared NavZone with Google and Compass (now part of iPlanet Portal). Based on factors such as users' completion time, number of clicks employed, number of correct answers found, and confidence and satisfaction levels, NavZone outperformed both alternatives in most of the categories. In fact, 96% of the subjects chose NavZone over Google and Compass as their preferred search engine during the usability study, which is surprising, considering that most users were not familiar with NavZone and its user interface.
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