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A STUDY OF SOCIAL NAVIGATION SUPPORT UNDER DIFFERENT SITUATIONAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS

Farzan, Rosta (2009) A STUDY OF SOCIAL NAVIGATION SUPPORT UNDER DIFFERENT SITUATIONAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

"Social Navigation" for the Web has been created as a response to the problem of disorientation in information space. It helps by visualizing traces of behavior of other users and adding social affordance to the information space. Despite the popularity of social navigation ideas, very few studies of social navigation systems can be found in the research literature. In this dissertation, I designed and carried out an experiment to explore the effect of several factors on social navigation support (SNS). The purpose of the experiment was to identify situations under which social navigation is most useful and to investigate the effect of personal factors, e.g., interpersonal trust, and gender on the likelihood of following social navigation cues. To gain a deeper insight into the effect of SNS on users' information seeking behavior, traditional evaluation methodologies were supplemented with eye tracking. The results of the study show that social navigation cues affect subjects' search behavior; specifically, while under time pressure subjects were more likely to use SNS. SNS was successful in guiding them to relevant documents and allowed them to achieve higher search performance. Reading abilities and interpersonal trust had a reliable effect on the SNS-following behavior and on subjects' subjective opinion about SNS. The effect of the gender was less pronounced than expected, contrary to the evidence in the literature.


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Details

Item Type: University of Pittsburgh ETD
Status: Unpublished
Creators/Authors:
CreatorsEmailPitt UsernameORCID
Farzan, Rostarosta@cs.pitt.eduRFARZAN
ETD Committee:
TitleMemberEmail AddressPitt UsernameORCID
Committee ChairBrusilovsky, Peterpeterb@mail.sis.pitt.eduPETERB
Committee MemberSchunn, Christian Dschunn@pitt.eduSCHUNN
Committee MemberNeuwirth, Christinecmn@andrew.cmu.edu
Committee MemberHe, Daqingdaqing@mail.sis.pitt.eduDAH44
Date: 15 June 2009
Date Type: Completion
Defense Date: 15 April 2009
Approval Date: 15 June 2009
Submission Date: 22 April 2009
Access Restriction: No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately.
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Schools and Programs: Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Intelligent Systems
Degree: PhD - Doctor of Philosophy
Thesis Type: Doctoral Dissertation
Refereed: Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords: eye tracking; social navigation support; user study; interpersonal trust; time constraint
Other ID: http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222009-134348/, etd-04222009-134348
Date Deposited: 10 Nov 2011 19:41
Last Modified: 19 Dec 2016 14:35
URI: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/7504

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