Understanding and facilitating the browsing of electronic text

Browsing tends to be used in two distinctive ways, alternatively associated with the goal of the activity and with the method by which the goal is ach ieved. In this study, the definition of browsing combines aspects of both c oncepts to define browsing as an activity in which one gathers information while scanning an information space without an explicit purpose. The object ive of this research was to examine how browsers interact with their browsi ng environment while manipulating two types of interface tools constructed from the content. (1) Menus: these were considered a stable device facilitating navigation, o rientation and route finding. One version was presented in traditional hier archical form while the other displayed an levels of the hierarchy simultan eously. (2) "Items-to-browse" tools: these were meant to encourage meandering and d iversion and to prime the browsing activity. One version displayed automati cally a set of Suggestions while the second was a typical Search Tool. Forty-seven adults (24 males) performed the two types of tasks tone with no purpose and the second, a control, purposeful) in four sessions over a per iod of four weeks. Participants scanned and/or searched the textual content of current issue plus three months of back issues of the Halifax Chronicle Herald/Mail Star using a system designed specifically for this research. A t any one time only one of each type of tool was available. Those with no assigned goal examined significantly more articles and explor ed more menu options. They made quick decisions about which articles to exa mine, spending twice as much time reading the content. They tended not to e xplore the newspaper to a great extent, examining only 24% of the articles in a single issue. About three-quarters of what they examined was new infor mation on topics that they had not known about before being exposed to the paper. The type of menu had no impact on performance, but differences were discovered between the two items-to-browse tools. Those with no goal select ed more articles from the Suggestions and found more interesting articles w hen the Suggestions were available. (C) 2000 Academic Press.