AN EXTENDED FISHEYE VIEW BROWSER FOR COLLABORATIVE WRITING

This study investigated information-seeking tasks and associated cognitive issues in the context of interacting with an evolving collaborative hypertext. Fisheye view browsers were used to facilitate exploring in a large information space. The fisheye view browser was extended to incorporate word frequencies. The effects of the fisheye view browser and the changing document were tested with a 2 × 2 factorial experiment. Multivariate tests found a significant interaction between the two factors and a significant main effect of the fisheye view browser. The users who had access to the word frequency information performed their tasks more effectively than the users without access to word frequencies. This work implies that several aspects of an evolving hypertext might also be usefully incorporated in an associated fisheye view browser. © 1994 Academic Press, Inc.