Data-driven user profiling to support web adaptation through cognitive styles and navigation behavior

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze human navigation behavior and identify similarities of cognitive styles using measures obtained from psychometric tests. Specific navigation metrics are utilized to find identifiable groups of users that have similar navigation patterns in relation to their cognitive style. The proposed work has been evaluated with a user study that entails a psychometric-based survey for extracting the users' cognitive styles, combined with a real usage scenario of users navigating in a controlled Web environment. A total of 84 participants of age between 17 and 25 participated in the study providing interesting insights with respect to cognitive styles and navigation behavior of users. Studies like the reported one can be useful for assisting adaptive interactive systems to organize and present information and functionalities in an adaptive format to diverse user groups. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.