SocialNavigation

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When we have problems getting around in life, we often rely on aides such as maps and signs. While this information is often very useful, it may be incomplete, hard to find, inaccurate, or difficult to use. To save time, many people then instead ask someone; i.e. delve the CommunityLore.

We also often would like to know what is good qualiity. A good measure of that is what is popular. For instance, the New York Times Best Seller List is a good place to go to find a good book to read. While popularity isn't a perfect measure of quality (for how does something new make it onto the list if it isn't already popular?), it is a pretty good filter for what isn't good.

This is called SocialNavigation (Dourish and Chalmers, 1994). An excellent book on this subject is Munro, Höök, and Benyon (1999).

Wexelblat (1998) provides a reasonable framework for looking at SocialNavigation online.

References

Dourish, P. and Chalmers, M. (1994) Running out of space: Models of information navigation. In HCI '94, Glasgow.

Munro, A. J., Höök, K., and Benyon, D. (eds.) (1999) Social navigation of information space. London: Springer-Verlag.

Wexelblat, A. (1998) History-rich tools for social navigation. Available from http://web.media.mit.edu/~wex/Footprints2/fp-v2.html

SocialNavigation

References

Discussion