Bridging the gap: The use of pathfinder networks in visual navigation

This paper describes a generic approach to the design of a 3D virtual environment for visual navigation. The basic design principle is that users need to understand how an environment is organised and how they can utilise the knowledge to find their way through the environment. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between implicit semantic structures associated with a collection of domain-specific documents and users' cognitive needs in the context of visual navigation. We extend the notion of Pathfinder networks in order to represent implicit semantic structures in a 3D virtual environment. Users' cognitive needs in visual navigation are conceptualised based on the concept of cognitive maps. (C) 1998 Academic Press.