CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Workshops
Workshop on Navigation in Electronic Worlds
George W. Furnas
School of Information
3080 West Hall
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1092
USA
furnas@umich.edu
Tel: +1 313-763-0076
Susanne Jul
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Michigan
1101 Beal Av.
Ann Arbor MI 48109
USA
sjul@umich.edu
Tel: +1 313-763-9074
Keywords
Navigation, Information Access, Electronic Worlds.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
Overview
This two-day workshop will bring together researchers and designers working
on different topics relevant to navigation in electronic information worlds.
The central focus will be on human navigation in electronic information
emphasizing fundamental issues in research and design. The chosen focus
requires awareness of the broader topics of navigation in general,
the impact of information structures, and properties of the electronic
world -- all in relation to properties of users, their tasks and contexts.
The goal of the workshop is to draw implications for the design of navigable
worlds and navigational aids from a broader, shared understanding of navigation,
including its relationship to other activities, and its requirements. The
workshop provides an opportunity for individuals who are currently separated
by discipline and domain to meet and create a common understanding.
Navigation
Whether in the physical world, the World Wide Web, or virtual reality,
people need to determine what is in the world, find their way around, and
understand the relationships among objects. This is often not a simple
task. People get disoriented, lost, and have trouble finding particular
objects or places. Search engines are being developed to meet some of these
challenges, but are not always sufficient, for instance, when what is sought
is determined by what is available. Navigation is a process whereby people
determine where they are, where everything else is, and how to get to particular
objects or places.
As electronic worlds become vast, distributed, and increasingly important
to daily activities, navigation in electronic information worlds
is becoming increasingly difficult. Evidence of the need for improved
navigational aids is the emergence of new navigational interfaces to the
World Wide Web, e.g., Yahoo!. This is simultaneously a return to and improvement
of the Web's original model of interaction, temporarily abandoned in favor
of a search model. The two models are complementary and need to be understood
better -- along with the relationship between them -- not just in
the World Wide Web, but in electronic worlds in general.
The Workshop
This workshop addresses the navigational model of interaction. We seek to
improve navigational design by improving understanding of navigation as
a user activity, and information and electronic worlds as contexts for that
activity. While design exercises are a viable approach to addressing such
questions, the objective of the workshop is to identify significant underlying
principles as well as possible design implications. Hence, the discussion
will favor theoretical abstractions
over practical considerations.
Relevant topics for discussion include:
- Theories of navigation
- Psychology of navigation
- Navigational aids
- Different types of worlds and their effect on navigation
- Designing for navigability
Other topics may, of course, emerge from participants' position papers
and the workshop discussion. The organizers welcome such evolution of workshop
content.
A report of the workshop will be published in the SIGCHI Bulletin. Additionally,
the organizers will propose a special issue of a professional journal -- such
as ToCHI, HCI, or interactions -- in which to publish,
collectively, papers emerging from workshop discussions.
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Workshops
