CoLiDeS+ Pic: a cognitive model of web-navigation based on semantic information from pictures

CoLiDeS + Pic is a cognitive model of web-navigation that takes into account the semantic information from graphical elements present on a web-page to compute the information scent value of the hyperlinks. The model is based on CoLiDeS which has a two-phase processing cycle: (a) attention phase, which first parses the web-page and focuses attention on the region of the web-page that is semantically most similar to the goal, and (b) action-selection phase, which evaluates the available actions in the focused region and selects a particular action such as clicking a link. The graphical elements are important both for attracting attention to a region of the web-page, and for communicating semantic meaning that may alter or enhance the meaning of the hyperlink labels. In the first part of this article, we give a theoretical explanation of the CoLiDeS + Pic model and describe the methodology followed to implement it. In the second part, we run a simulation on a mock-up website and evaluate the effectiveness of the CoLiDeS + Pic model on basis of the simulation results. It was found that CoLiDeS + Pic with highly relevant pictures predicts the correct hyperlink with greater information scent more frequently than CoLiDeS (without pictures) or CoLiDeS + Pic with lowly relevant pictures. These results confirm the importance of including information from pictures into the modeling of web-navigation.