Effects of multimedia on document browsing and navigation: an exploratory empirical investigation

As intranets become more widely adopted by business organizations, a growing number of IS are being developed or retrofitted to hypermedia style in order to provide standard Web browsers as the user interface. This allows business documents to be organized and connected by hyperlinks. As a result, the retrieving of information has become easier and more useful in the decision-making process. A field experiment was conducted to assess the effects of multimedia on decision makers’ browsing and navigation behavior. Data was collected using a study group of forty professionals with management responsibilities. To identify possible business threats and opportunities, participants searched and analyzed information stored in an experimental Executive Support System (ESS). Participants’ information-browsing and navigation behaviors were recorded for analysis. The results suggest that the use of multimedia: • affects decision makers’ browsing and navigation behavior in terms of total browsing time, average browsing time per document, and total number of documents retrieved; • does not affect navigation efficiency; • cognitive styles of users do not affect their navigation efficiency.