Looking Ahead: A Comparison of Page Preview Techniques for Goal-Directed Web Navigation

摘要

On the World Wide Web, page previews augment hyperlinks to provide extra information about each link's destination. These previews can reduce navigation time and errors in goal-directed navigation tasks when the information provided by the text and context of links is inadequate. A number of different types of page previews have been proposed, and some are already in use; however, little is known about which preview types will consistently help users make good navigation decisions. Our study compares six preview techniques (title, URL, subject category, page genre, genre symbol, and thumbnail), two delivery mechanisms (inline and popup), and two page load times (fast and slow). We found that previews showing the genre of the page (e.g., whether the page is an information page or a search page) yielded significantly faster performance than other preview techniques, and participants also preferred the genre-based previews. Our study is the first to compare the performance of a wide range of page previews in a naturalistic, non-search environment, and provides empirical data that can improve support for goal-directed navigation.