Social navigation has been proposed as a means to help users cope with large information spaces. Through making other users actions visible we can take advantage of their work to find our way around and to solve problems. By information space, we mean anything from the interface to a normal application to large hypermedia spaces such as the World Wide Web or virtual reality environments. Users actions can be made visible in various ways: through direct social navigation (talking to or seeing individual users act), indirect social navigation (seeing the aggregated user behavior as in recommender system advice), or readwear (seeing how an object has been used by other users through its texture).
Social navigation seem to be a natural approach to the design of an information space; yet we still have not seen many practical solutions that allow users to behave socially, interfaces that allow for the accumulation of social trails, or the aggregation of user behaviors. We invite practitioners, designers and evaluators who are trying to design for social navigation of information spaces to come and discuss problems, practical solutions, develop ideas and solutions.
When we say useful solutions, we do not necessarily mean that social navigation must contribute to the efficiency of the interface from the user point of view. What is gained by social navigation might not be, and maybe should not be, time and efficiency, but instead it might contribute to other factors. Maybe a better question to ask is how do we know that we have created a good navigational experience? Will it be a matter of more aesthetic or emotional factors, such as feelings of flow or having a delightful experience, as opposed to the efficiency measurements usually taken for the prevailing tool-based usability evaluations?
The workshop will bring together and many varied viewpoints around these ideas as we can find.
We encourage practitioners in the field to send in a two-page abstract, using the CHI standard format. The abstract should focus either on describing a system that implements social navigation, or an evaluation study of a social navigation tool. Please indicate in an accompanying letter whether there will be a demo of a running system and any system requirements.
Please submit electronically (PDF or Word) to kia@sics.se
Deadline for submissions: 28th of January 2000.