IA7400 Magisteruppsats, 20p, VT99 Navigation in large Web Sites- three cases of Internet News Publishing

The purpose of this thesis is to study a number of design principles for navigation support (the means that exist to help the users to find their way within a web site) and how this support is used by first time users in an online newspaper environment. I have chosen to study the web sites of three different newspapers located in different countries in Scandinavia: Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, Göteborgs-Posten in Sweden and Dagbladet in Norway. First some design principles for good navigation support were defined through literature studies: landmarks, consistency, metaphor, URLs, titles and sitemaps/TOCs, followed by an evaluation of each web site. Interviews at each newspaper were then conducted and finally a usability test with a test group of twelve participants was carried out. The main question of this thesis is: How is it possible to reduce cognitive overhead in an online newspaper web site for first time users? The results have shown that Jylland-Posten has succeeded best in this context and that the Dagbladet web site “grows ” on you after a while. By using the newspaper metaphor and providing navigation support that is consistent in its placement all ove