Navigability Design and Measurement

Abstract

Navigation has been a significant issue in portal design and evaluation because one of the biggest problems in using the Web is “lost in the information ocean.” To solve navigability problems in the development of Web sites in general, and portals in particular, navigation design guidelines and navigability metrics have been proposed and investigated in the literature. The guidelines are rules for the design of portal’s structures to ensure acceptable navigability. The metrics provide a set of quantitative measurements to analyse and evaluate the designs of portals so that the navigability can be judged objectively and compared precisely. These two approaches are complementary to each other, and form a set of Web engineering techniques to solve Web portal navigability problem.