Navigation Strategies

The way users navigate through a hyperdocument does not only depend on their interest and on the information they find in the nodes. Different users follow a different strategy, which is either "prudent" or more "daring". Prudent users explore the neighborhood of the node they start from before moving further away. This strategy is called breadth-first navigation. The "daring" dive into the hyperdocument, moving further and further away by following links (forwards) and only backing out when they reach a node with no outgoing links. This strategy is called depth-first navigation.

Actual users use a browsing strategy in between breadth-first and depth-first navigation. Both the content of the hyperdocument and the embedded links may suggest deviations from either strategy.

The experiments by De Vocht [DeVocht-94] distinguish the following browsing strategies: