The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of navigational maps on user navigation performance in a hypermedia system. In our experiment, one hundred and sixteen subjects who joined this experiment were randomly assigned into 3 treatment groups—global knowledge map, local knowledge map and no map. The measured variables in this study included information searching performance, browsing performance, and cognition development performance.
1. A one-way ANOVA analysis was performed on collected data. The results can be summarized as followings:
2. The global-map group significantly outperformed the rest groups in thier information searching performance and browsing performance.
3. The global-map group significantly outperformed the no-map group in thier cognition development performance.
To sum up, the results indicated that, in general, the global map was very useful for navigation in a hypermedia system.