Experimental evaluation of intelligent assistance for navigation

摘要

Modern user interfaces make extensive use of navigation, a metaphor based on wayfinding in a physical space. Navigation can be an effective solution for many problems in understanding and manipulating a complex information space. Unfortunately, current research toward domain-independent, intelligent assistance for navigation lacks some important conceptual and practical tools for evaluation. This article describes an empirical study of assisted navigation that investigates the relationship between the quality of the assistance and overall performance. Our definition of quality is based on the information retrieval concepts of precision and recall. We use the limitations of the study results to motivate the development of a general-purpose navigation testbed. By separating the concerns of retrieving navigational data, maintaining and managing the resulting information space, and providing different views into the space, the testbed facilitates the development of navigational mechanisms and supports their evaluation. The testbed will act as a foundation for future work toward the automated generation of intelligent tools for navigational assistance.