EVALUATING ADAPTIVE NAVIGATION SUPPORT
Kristina Höök and Martin Svensson
SICS Box 1263 S-164 28 Kista Sweden
kia@sics.se, martins@sics.se
ABSTRACT
Since navigation in information spaces is a difficult task, it is easy to envision ways of sup-porting users through adapting the navigation to their knowledge, task or cognitive ability. Ad-aptation of navigation is, however, a "two-edged" sword since it may well just contribute to the users' workload rather than reducing it. If the space is altered, parts are hidden from the user, or links are annotated, etc. users may become confused or learn less of the structure. From the few evaluations of adaptive navigation systems that have been performed, we see an emerging pattern where depending upon the domain, only certain types of adaptive navigation works.
Furthermore, evaluations of adaptive navigation support systems fail to recognise some of the more important aspects of why certain systems provide better support than others. These studies typically measure task completion time, or how well the structure of the space is remembered. While these are among the important measurements that should be taken, other features, such as how much anxiety the system induces in users, how pleasant it is to navigate, or how much users actually learn of the information contained in the space, might be more crucial measurements.