Reducing Cognitive Overhead on the World Wide Web

Abstract

HyperScout, a Web application, is an intermediary between a server and a client. It intercepts a page to the client, gathers information on each link, and annotates each link with the discovered information. This paper reports on the development of HyperScout var UniSA, a development of the HyperScout model and application, that dramatically extends static and dynamic link annotations. Annotations provide the user with additional information, which they use to make better navigational choices. On the web, it is common for long lists of hyperlinks to be presented to the user, from which they select links to follow or ignore. The user's mental state in this situation is termed cognitive overhead, a potentially overwhelming condition. To assist the user in making their choice, various characteristics of a link may be presented to the user. Despite these characteristics being readily available from a number of sources, current web servers and browsers do not attempt to retrieve, let alone display, such attributes. To show that cognitive overhead is easily, and immediately, reducible, a number of techniques were explored. Development progressed from statically created annotations, through to dynamically generated annotations. The static annotations were implemented with a combination of tools available to every web author. It was found that, while simple enough for every author to implement, static annotations bearing static information would not be accurate or timely enough to guide the user. Therefore, information must be gathered dynamically. The solution is either an intermediary between server and client, or a more sophisticated browser.