WHICH WAY NOW - ANALYZING AND EASING INADEQUACIES IN WWW NAVIGATION

This paper examines the usability of the hypertext navigation faciliti es provided by World Wide Web client applications. A notation is defin ed to represent the user's navigational acts and the resultant system states. The notation is used to report potential, or ''theoretical,'' problems in the models of navigation supported by three web client app lications. A usability study confirms that these problems emerge in ac tual use, and demonstrates that incorrect user models of the clients' facilities are common. A usability analysis identifies inadequacies in the clients' interfaces. Motivated by the analysis of usability probl ems, we propose extensions to the design of WWW client applications. T hese proposals are demonstrated by our system WebNet which uses dynami c graphical overview diagrams to extend the navigational facilities of conventional World Wide Web client applications. Related work on grap hical overview diagrams for web navigation is reviewed. (C) 1996 Acade mic Press Limited