Navigation: Within and Beyond the Metaphor in Interface Design and Evaluation

Abstract

Over the last few years we have been exploring an alternative conceptual isation of human-computer interaction (HCl) that sees HCl as the navigation of information spaces (Benyon and Höök, 1997). As a corollary cognitive engineers can be seen as the creators of information artefacts (Benyon, 1998b). The work is closely allied to some interesting developments in HCl, notably the concepts of “social navigation” presented in this volume and in (Munro, Höök and Benyon, 1999), but also to the ideas of distributed cognition (Hollan, Hutchins and Kirsh, 2002). Elsewhere in this volume (notably in the chapters by Spence and Chalmers) the concept of navigation itself is explored. In this chapter we report on our work concerned with exploring how well concepts that have been developed in disciplines such as architecture and urban planning transfer to information spaces.