Exploring Navigation: Towards a Framework for Design and Evaluation of Navigation in Electronic Spaces

PERSONA is an acronym for PERsonal and SOcial NAvigation. The name of the project illustrates its two-fold approach; studying the individual cognitive, social and cultural differences in navigational ability and recognizing that computer users are social beings in interacting with other people as they make their way through information spaces. Based on this understanding we are developing new approaches to interactive system design. One of these is to identify how and where we can adapt to the individual person's needs. At the same time we are developing alternative approaches to system design, breaking away from the lonely 'walker in the woods' picture of the information system user, to a social being able to interact with other users and so get help in achieving their goals. In this first deliverable from the project, we present a comprehensive review of literature which we see as having an impact on navigation in information space. This volume contains a number of individual and co-authored papers covering various aspects of geographic and electronic spaces and on navigation in geographic and electronic spaces; Individual and cultural differences; Social aspects of navigation; Design based on alternative or complimentary approaches that we believe hold the promise of making interfaces and systems more navigable.This document is a slightly revised version of Deliverable 1.1.1 of the PERSONA project, submitted to the European Commission in February 1998. Only typographic errors have been corrected, leading to some changes in the lay-out of the individual pages. The contents and the general lay-out of the individual chapters, including their length are, however, the same as in the original document.