Menu Organization and User Expertise in Information Search Tasks

Abstract

A categorical menu structure based on experts' semantic memory organization was developed, and search efficiency using this menu organization, relative to search efficiency using alphabetic and random menu organizations, was evaluated for users with different levels of expertise. In Experiment 1 experts in psychology sorted 120 psychological terms and the data were submitted to a multidimensional scaling procedure to identify the clusters of terms used to develop the categorical menu organization. In Experiment 2 search efficiency with the three different menu organizations was evaluated for users with different levels of expertise in the subject domain on two different search tasks: (1) definition matching, wherein given a definition, it was necessary to find the correct term with its definition; and (2) term matching, wherein given a term, it was necessary to find the identical term with its definition. Performance on both search tasks improved directly with expertise in the subject area when the categorical menu organization was used, and experts completed the definition-matching task faster than novices with all three types of menu organization. However, performance on the term-matching task was not influenced by expertise when alphabetic and random menu organizations were used.