In several of the groups' documents, multiple levels of indices had to be followed before arriving at actual information about a topic. Although these indices aided navigation for new users, they actually became a slight hindrance once the document's organization was understood by a user. To provide information more quickly, the combined document includes as much information as possible on index pages. For instance, each node within an architecture is available from the index page of that architecture; this is shown in Figure 6 by the links extending from ARCHX's index node to the topic nodes. The number of necessary links makes the index page somewhat unwieldy and large but any information about the architecture can be accessed from that node. An additional advantage of this approach is that the hierarchical organization of the information is obvious from the index.
Although Group 1's iconic representation allowed users to quickly identify their place in the document and to quickly reach low-level information, the icons themselves were slow to load, resulting in significant pauses when a link was accessed that had multiple internal icons. Thus, much of the fluidity of reading hypertext was lost. The combined document uses icons sparingly and only when their presence conveys a lot of information to the user. For example, icons are used to identify non-text links (such as graphics).
Another way information is provided quickly in the final document is through the use of Group 2's search interface and an addendum to the document similar to Group 5's original tabular format. By using the tabular format to summarize the information in the document, a user can identify key features and ideas related to a topic and then move immediately from the table to the in-depth organization of the actual document. Additionally, since the tabular format is only a summary of the information and is not intended to be exhaustive, it does not constrain the expansion of the organization of the rest of the document as Group 5 experienced with such an organization as its base.
