A Comparative study of protocol analysis for Spatiality of a Text-based Cyberspace

Abstract. The adaptation of the word cyberspace (Gibson, 1984) following the emergence of the World Wide Web Internet not only succinctly revolutionized the correlation of time and space but also poised to challenge how we view the existing spatial concept. This research tries to use protocol analysis to examine text-based cyberspace, such as bulletin board, chart rooms and so forth, and the objective of this research is to realize the spatiality of cyberspace through the cognitive point of view, and to compare the differences of the definitions and perception ways of spatiality between people with general domain and in design fields. Finally, we validate the existence of cyberspace, where the process not only allows further categorization of spatial elements concluded from the earlier study, but discover that varied backgrounds can affect how a user defines and perceives cyberspace (Strate, 1999)