Navigation in large Web Sites - three cses of Internet news.

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study a number of design principles for navigation support (the means that exist to help the users to find their way within a web site) and how this support is used by first time users in an online newspaper environment. I have chosen to study the web sites of three different newspapers located in different countries in Scandinavia: Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, Göteborgs-Posten in Sweden and Dagbladet in Norway. First some design principles for good navigation support were defined through literature studies: landmarks, consistency, metaphor, URLs, titles and sitemaps/TOCs, followed by an evaluation of each web site. Interviews at each newspaper were then conducted and finally a usability test with a test group of twelve participants was carried out. The main question of this thesis is: How is it possible to reduce cognitive overhead in an online newspaper web site for first time users? The results have shown that Jylland-Posten has succeeded best in this context and that the Dagbladet web site `growsä on you after a while. By using the newspaper metaphor and providing navigation support that is consistent in its placement all over the web site and by providing clear and distinct labelling of the different sections serving as landmarks will help reduce cognitive overhead, according to the usability test conducted.