ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Scientific understandings of how people search for information are essential to the development of Web usability. The emergence of the Web as a global information environment has fueled the interests of many researchers and practitioners in how to make the Web as useful as it can be. Crucial to its success are its ubiquitous and searchable qualities. Despite its success, most of the current practices of Web design are based on empirical observations and intuition. The development of an accurate cognitive model of how users search for information on the Web is crucial to Web usability, because researchers and practitioners alike require a more complete and deeper understanding of users’ decision processes than what we know today.
