NAVIGATION IN INFORMATION SPACE: HOW DOES SPATIAL ABILITY PLAY A PART?
Author(s):
Ishtiaq Ahmed ,
James Blustein
Paper abstract: Spatial implications of the commonly used ‘navigation’ metaphor have lead many research works to investigate the premeditated relation between individual differences and navigation. This study presents an exploratory survey on the influence of spatial ability, the most incisive aspect of individual difference for navigation, when people try to accomplish their goal in the information space. Based on the previous results, researchers, in the field, are equivocal to state that a person with high spatial ability performs better in navigation. There are still different opinions about the potential of visual mediators for people with low spatial ability that help in refraining from the state of being disoriented or lost in the avalanche of information. The findings motivated us to design a research framework that may show us the result for drawing some contributory inference on this issue. The framework is presented after the extensive discussion. At the end, we discuss on future improvement schemes for this design and also on some overtures for further works along this direction.
Keywords:
Hypertext navigation, spatial ability, information space, information visualization.
Type:
Full Paper
Full Contents (click to dowload):
First Page: 119
Last Page: 125
Year:
2005
Editors:
Piet Kommers and Pedro Isaías
ISBN:
972-99353-7-8
Language:
English
Conference Name:
IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2005
