David Bowler dwbowler@wam.umd.edu
Waikei Ng waikeing@hotmail.com
Peter Schwartz petersch@wam.umd.edu

Abstract

Navigation bars are those handy sets of links that many websites employ to keep users on the right track. They help users browse and search information as well as provide paths back up the web hierarchy. The goal of our study was to determine the effectiveness of the selection list navigation bar, an innovation to the standard navigation bar. Eighteen subjects searched web site structures to find answers to multiple choice questions using control (single link back to the home page), standard (a list of links back to each page in the path), and selection list (a list of lists of links to each page in the path and each of their siblings) styles of navigation bars. We found that after a short amount of use, subjects could significantly reduce the number page loads necessary to find an answer using the selection lists, but could not significantly reduce the amount of time necessary.