Applying Bifocal Displays to Enhance WWW Navigation

Abstract

The usability difficulty associated with the navigation of a large computer-based information space has been well reported in the human-computer interaction literature. The use of overview diagrams as a navigation aid ameliorates the problem of global orientation. However, as the size of these diagrams increases the entire map cannot be displayed in its entirety, thus significantly reducing their effectiveness.

This paper proposes the use of the Bifocal Display as a visualisation aid to assist with navigating the WWW. The essence of this technique is to provide the user with current global view and local context. A number of WWW pages have been implemented using the Bifocal Display to illustrate the concept. Issues related to implementation are also discussed in the paper.

Keywords

WorldWideWeb, Visualisation, Navigation

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