Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / With the growth of hypertext and multimedia applications
that support and encourage browsing it is time to
take a penetrating look at browsing behavior. Several dimensions
of browsing are examined, to find out: first, what is browsing
and what cognitive processes are associated with it; second,
is there a browsing strategy, and if so, are there any differences
between how subject-area experts and novices browse;
and finally, how can this knowledge be applied to improve the
design of hypertext systems. Two groups of students, subject-area
experts and novices, were studied while browsing a Macintosh
H y p e r c a r d application on the subject of The Vietnam War. A
protocol analysis technique was used to gather and analyze data.
Components of the GOMS model were used to describe the goals,
operators, methods, and selection rules observed. Three browsing
strategies were identified: 1) search-oriented browse, scanning
and reviewing information relevant to a fixed task, 2) reviewbrowse,
scanning and reviewing interesting information in the
presence of transient browse goals that represent changing tasks,
and 3) scan-browse, scanning for interesting information (without
review). Most subjects primarily used review-browse interspersed
with search-oriented browse. Within this strategy, comparisons
between subject-area experts and novices revealed differences in
tactics: experts browsed in more depth, seldom used referential
links, selected different kinds of topics, and viewed information
differently than did novices. Based on these findings, suggestions
are made to hypertext developers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/105491 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Carmel, Erran, Crawford, Stephen, Chen, Hsinchun |
| Publisher | IEEE |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Journal Article (Paginated) |
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