The Effects of Cognitive Abilities and Geographic Orientation Ability on Navigation in Verbal and Graphical Interfaces

: Users performance when seeking for information in two information spaces of different design was correlated with their cognitive abilities, and their geographic orientation ability. One of the information spaces had a visuo-graphical interface, and the other a verbal interface. The results showed that correlations with spatial abilities and with geographical abilities were found only for the visuo-spatial system. This suggests that so-called information navigation perhaps is less similar to navigation in geographic space than has previously been thought, and as a consequence that designers perhaps should consider developing more verbally based help tools or interface designs to support users with less strong spatial abilities.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: INTERACT
• Authors: Nils Dahlbäck
• Keywords: Geographic Orientation Ability, Information Spaces, INTERACT 2003, INTERACT 2007, Spatial Abilities