Navigation Fidelity in 3D Perspective Displays for Web-Based Shopping: From Nodes to Views

To assess its usefulness as a Web navigation-aiding metaphor, a virtual Euclidean space was created that participants (N = 96) navigated to find information in a Web shopping environment. Acquisition of configural-survey 3-dimensional (3D) spatial knowledge of the environment, measured with pointing and sketch map tasks, was compared using perspective displays of virtual environments created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) versus a 3D graphics engine. HTML navigation fidelity was manipulated by varying the turn angles and the number of viewpoints per store. Lower navigation fidelity reduced configural knowledge acquisition, but HTML store environments using 45�-turn angles and 9 viewpoints per store were not reliably different from the 3D virtual environment generated by a graphics engine with optical flow. Target object location (within-store, between-store) also had a significant effect. The results indicate that HTML could be used to develop virtual Web shopping environments using discrete perspective displays. Implications for Web shopping interface design are discussed.