Does a Split-View Aid Navigation Within Academic Documents?

Abstract

Paper is still the dominant medium in academic reading. One reason is the ease of navigation within a paper document. We therefore investigate how to provide a more paper-like navigation within an academic document when read digitally. We present the results of a user study in which we compare the standard single-view hyperlink navigation with a split-view navigation. The split-view offers the reader a primary reading view of the document as well as a contextual view next to it. When a hyperlink is activated in the reading view the contextual view shows the referenced element. While we found no difference between user performance, the split-view was preferred by almost all users to the standard single-view navigation model.