The design and evaluation of Novel prototypes to visualize web browsing history

Abstract

Mainstream Web browsers support users in revisiting Web Pages by providing them with a history tool. Research shows that this history tool is severely underutilized. One possible reason is the manner in which the pages are displayed: a linear list of textual links. This thesis investigates the redesign of the history tool by introducing visualization to display the visited Web pages. Three distinct visual prototypes were designed ranging from a traditional scientific visualization method to a concrete visualization that incorporates a metaphor and knowledge transfer from the real-world. The low-fidelity prototypes were evaluated by participants and the best performing design was implemented as a high-fidelity prototype. Further evaluation with participants was conducted and the results were compared against the performance of participants using the traditional history tool of linear textual links.