An Exploratory Evaluation of Three Interfaces for
Browsing Large Hierarchical Tables of Contents
An Exploratory Evaluation of Three Interfaces for
Browsing Large Hierarchical Tables of Contents
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Date
1998-10-15
Authors
Chimera, Richard
Shneiderman, Ben
Advisor
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Abstract
Three different interfaces were used to browse a large (1296 items) table
of contents. A fully expanded stable interface, expand/contract interface,
and multi-pane interface were studied in a between-groups experiment
with 41 novice participants. Nine timed fact retrieval tasks were performed,
each task is analyzed and discussed separately. We found that both the
expand/contract and multi-pane interfaces produced significantly faster times
than the stable interface for many tasks using this large hierarchy;
other advantages of the expand/contract and multi-pane interfaces over
the stable interface are discussed. The animation characteristics of the
expand/contract interface appear to play a major role.
Refinements to the multi-pane and expand/contract interfaces are suggested.
A predictive model for measuring navigation effort of each interface
is presented.
(Also cross-referenced as CAR-TR-539)