Interacting with infotainment applications: navigation patterns and mental models

This article investigates the way users interact with typical multimedia infotainment applications. The focus is on the development over time of their navigation behaviours in the information structure, and their mental models of it. The experiment involved a multimedia infotainment (CD-i) title with some 150 information items. Subjects were asked to perform a series of exploration, search, and drawing tasks; sessions were concluded with an interview and a reconstruction task. We compared objective navigational data with subjective results concerning the users' mental models, using the terminology of the navigational framework of Edwards and Hardman (1989). We found that after one hour only 25% of the information items had been explored. Subjects use the first 20-30 minutes to discover the (local) structures. Then they start to observe the presentations in a more content-related way. The development of the user's mental model appears to proceed relatively steadily. The perceived distance between information elements mainly depends on the number of steps to be taken.