A Computational Model and Classification Framework for Social

Social navigation is the process of making navigational decisions in real or virtual environments based on social and communicative interaction with others. A computational model for social navigation is presented as an extension to an existing framework for general navigation, reducing decision-making to the minimization of cognitive costs. Consideration for social navigation gives rise to a classification framework based on the synchronicity, directness, and social presence in social interaction, each of which has direct effect on the cognitive costs of navigational tasks. Finally, a new recommender system, TRAILGUIDE, is presented as a tool that facilitates social navigation by allowing authors to explicitly publish “trails” within and between World Wide Web pages.