Social navigation

Social navigation is a form of social computing introduced by Dourish and Chalmers in 1994. They defined it as when 'movement from one item to another is provoked as an artifact of the activity of another or a group of others'. According to later research in 2002, 'social navigation exploits the knowledge and experience of peer users of information resources' to guide users in the information space. With all of the digital information available both on the World Wide Web and from other sources, it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and search efficiently. Studying others' navigational trails and understanding their behavior can help improve one's own search strategy by helping them to make more informed decisions based on the actions of others. 'The idea of social navigation is to aid users to navigate information spaces through making the collective, aggregated, or individual actions of others visible and useful as a basis for making decisions on where to go next and what to choose.' Social navigation is a form of social computing introduced by Dourish and Chalmers in 1994. They defined it as when 'movement from one item to another is provoked as an artifact of the activity of another or a group of others'. According to later research in 2002, 'social navigation exploits the knowledge and experience of peer users of information resources' to guide users in the information space. With all of the digital information available both on the World Wide Web and from other sources, it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate and search efficiently. Studying others' navigational trails and understanding their behavior can help improve one's own search strategy by helping them to make more informed decisions based on the actions of others. 'The idea of social navigation is to aid users to navigate information spaces through making the collective, aggregated, or individual actions of others visible and useful as a basis for making decisions on where to go next and what to choose.' Prior to advancement of Web 2.0 and the Social Web, the World Wide Web had been a solitary space where users did not really have knowledge of where anyone else was browsing and navigating at the same time or different time. Social navigation can help to give users a sense of social presence. The scope of research on social navigation has been increasing especially as information visualization improves. Displaying social information in virtual spaces allows the modeling of user behavior to make digital systems feel more social and less solitary. The concept of social navigation is supported by several theories. Information foraging theory studies human behavior when they are seeking, gathering, sharing and consuming information. Information foraging theory applies optimal foraging theory (OFT) to human behavior when they navigate to information. It explains how people get benefit from other people based on history- rich digital objects which explains the idea of used items or paths. For examples, a used book that has notes, highlights and underlines is different from a new book, and footprints where people follow others’ footprints to get the right direction. History- rich digital objects help people to find the target faster and more efficient. Information foraging, also, is an alternative to food foraging and ant colony optimization which states that information human-hunters follow others’ paths to reach their target in an optimal time. The optimal information has to maximize the value of the information that is gained per unit cost (like time or effort). This theory supports collaborative activities. It is a guide for designers to build good interfaces where users can get benefit from others research. The weaknesses of this theory are when people trace information in a wrong direction, there’s no way to re-direct them unless they figure it out, and optimization is not always the case on human behavior; humans make decision when they are satisfied with the result. Information patch model studies time that is spent in navigation in filtered information and clustered information and works to optimize the overall information in an optimal time. Information scent model determines value of information using the most useful cues which have been done by other users. Information diet model (prey selection) explains how people select the target information based on others selection which leads to optimal satisfying information. The mere design of webpages also plays an important role in how a user interacts with the internet in a social manner. There is a correlation between accessibility and popularity. The more functional a website is, the more traffic it will receive. A more frequented web service will naturally be a more social experience. There are numerous factors that contribute to accessibility such as location of the page on a website, properties of a page, number of hyperlinks on a page, and possible ways of arriving at the page. Every person has a different approach to surfing the web. Internet navigation is defined as 'The creation and interpretation of an internal (mental) model, and its component activities are browsing, modelling, interpretation and formulation of browsing strategy.' There is a theory that if a user calibrates their browsing strategy to reflect their interests, more interesting pages will be found. Uninformed chugging through hyperlinks can be misleading and result in a higher proportion of unwanted sites being accessed. To improve surfing, users should formulate a strategy, browse content, and then adjust based on how they judge the quality of the session. Bookmarking is way to ensure you return to sites that appeal to your interests. This is the building block of social navigation as it creates a hyperlink that is saved for future browsing. When a population bookmarks the same page visits it frequently, it forms a sense of community. Recently, live updating of other present users adds another dimension to the social aspect of web browsing. For example, Facebook has a small green circle next to specific names in the chat window indicating those users are also on the site. How we communicate with others using web mediums is a foundation of social navigation.