Strategy, Spatial Visualization Ability, and Performance on Website Navigation

Spatial Visualization Ability is a determinant of performance efficiency on website navigation tasks. It is unclear, however, why this is the case; though the spatial metaphor for web “navigation” is popular, it is not accurate. We put forth a hypothesis that strategy use is another important component of web navigation efficiency that relates to Spatial Visualization Ability. To investigate this hypothesis, we designed a series of experiments using numeric indicators instead of verbal labels in model websites. We then characterized the strategies that participants used on each website into categories based on their resemblance to prototype strategies. We found that, though strategy choice does not seem to depend on Spatial Visualization Ability, precise implementation does seem to depend to some degree on Spatial Visualization Ability.