Modeling Information Navigation: Implications for Information Architecture

Previous studies for menu and Web search tasks have suggested differing advice on the optimal number of selections per page. In this article, we examine this discrepancy through the use of a computational model of information navigation that simulates users navigating through a Web site. By varying the quality of the link labels in our simulations, we find that the optimal structure depends on the quality of the labels and are thus able to account for the results in the previous studies. We present additional empirical results to further validate the model and corroborate our findings. Finally we discuss our findings' implications for the information architecture of Web sites.

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