Title: Recall Of Landmarks In Information Space

When: Monday, April 19, 2004, 12:30-2:30 PM

Where: Room 503 IS Building

Who: Molly Sorrows

Committee: Dr. Stephen Hirtle (advisor/chair), Dr. Michael Spring, Dr. Michael Lewis, Dr. Peter Brusilovsky, Dr. Edie Rasmussen (The University of British Columbia, Vancouver)

Abstract: Research on navigation and landmarks in physical space, information space and virtual reality environments indicates that landmarks play an important role in all types of navigation. This dissertation tackles the problem of defining and evaluating the characteristics of landmarks in information space. This work validates a recent theory that three types of characteristics, structural, visual and semantic, are important for effective landmarks.

This dissertation applies concepts and techniques from the extensive body of research on physical space navigation to the investigation of landmarks on a web site in the World Wide Web. Data was collected in two experiments to examine characteristics of web pages on the University of Pittsburgh web site. In addition, objective measurements were made to examine the characteristics of web pages with relation to the experimental data. The two experiments examined subjects’ knowledge, use and evaluation of web pages. This research is unique in research on web navigation in its use of experimental techniques that ask subjects to recall from memory possible navigation paths and URLs.