SLEUTHING IN HYPERHOLMES(TM) - AN EVALUATION OF USING HYPERTEXT VS A BOOK TO ANSWER QUESTIONS

Although hypertext offers exciting new ways of presenting and accessin g information, there is little research which systematically compares the usability of hypertext against traditional media with an eye to im proving the design of the hypertext. This paper presents the results o f an experiment which examined the performance and navigation strategi es of users engaged in a question-answering task using either a hypert ext encyclopedia of Sherlock Holmes facts (the HyperHolmes(TM) system) or the traditional paper form. The results showed that, overall, the hypertext users were marginally more accurate in answering questions, and excelled at questions where the key information was embedded in a text entry. The book users were marginally faster overall, but excelle d only in answering questions based on graphics. Hypertext users showe d a preference for those tools which most closely mimicked use of a co nventional book. They used a hierarchical structure to guide their nav igation strategy in early trials, but soon learned to navigate in a no n-hierarchical, flat way.