In this study usability tests were conducted with employees of the Aetna corporation, on a test website set up for the study. They were given a chance to briefly explore the test website and then given a set of questions to answer that would require navigating through the website to answer. Also some of the questions asked were typical usability questions. Log records of users sessions on the computer were also kept. Results indicated that, “First and foremost, evaluators (this is the term they use for the users testing the system) wanted navigation buttons fixed at the top, in the region of the Browser buttons… The Local Navigation buttons were very confusing, especially Previous and Next. For experienced web users, there was a lot of mental conflict with the “Back” and “Forward” concept of the Browser. Novice users just did not understand the concept… Fixing navigation buttons reduces scrolling and search times, thereby improving productivity. Much time is wasted just maneuvering to the location of navigation buttons… Good Structure aids are invaluable to navigation.”
Overall the main lesson here for page layout is put the most important navigation at the top, and fix it to the top.
A set of 304 participants were asked to decide where in a browser window different web objects would go. The window was broken down into a 8X7 grid. Different objects were represented by cards that were to be placed on the grid, different objects were different sizes, .
This was a very similar study as the previous one by Bernard, except this time he had 346 participants and he classified them as either novice or experienced web users. The results were the same as in the previous study in regards to where participants felt items should go. As for possible differences between novice and experienced users, there was none found, suggesting that people quickly develop a mental schema for where objects should go.
“This study was aimed at investigating the existence of spatial schemata specifically involved in the cognitive organization of web pages.” They took 23 students and used words that represented types of links to resources found on most corporate web sites. They would be shown the stimuli for a brief period after which they were asked to as quickly as possible click on the blank screen with the mouse the spot they would expect to find that link.
The cluster analysis results showed that there were area's of the browser window where user's expected to find the different types of links. “Natural deployment of web objects seems to occur, albeit this is not always the case.” This natural positioning that occurs in web design is somewhat related to the idea of affordance according to the authors. The most important idea presented here is that web objects should be placed in standard location because this is what users expect.
In this study participants were asked to navigate the same material presented in different hierarchical schemes and find a given target. The hierarchies were 16X32, 32X16, and 8X8X8; here the first number represents the number of top level pages, the second number is the number of pages under each top level page, and so on. The clear winner here was the 16X32. Suggesting that too much depth is too confusing, and too much breadth to early on is equally too confusing. As justification for their finding that 16X32 was the best for user performance: "researchers in cognitive science have long modeled decision making behavior as a more time-intensive cognitive process than simple visual search."
Here the researchers looked to study participants responses in finding a target file/icon with in a group of icons. They varied the number of distractors, they varied whether the icons were grouped by type of file or not. They had a control condition of just file names. “The results showed that both the presence of icons and the spatial grouping of icons speeded the search for a target file… our results support the notion that icons, by their pictorial nature, may have other inherent properties that lead to improved user performance at the interface.”
What this means for web page layout is graphical representations of items, like navigation buttons, should be grouped together into related sets.
“The Experiment consisted of four layout conditions, each differentiated by spatial grouping and semantic coherence of a display of icon-like items attached with textual labels.” The 2 variables by which the conditions differed where spatial grouping and semantic grouping. Semantic grouping means that items that are similar semantically are closer to each-other than those that are different. While Spatial grouping just means there are sets of items grouped together spatially. You can have semantic grouping with out spatial grouping by putting similar items closer to each-other but not making a spatial distinct set. The experiments were a study recall design, where a participant studies a layout and then is asked to do a recall. In this study that involved either recalling labels on items, locations of items, or both.
Generally results indicated that spatially grouping items by proximity that are semantically related increases memory performance for both location and and names, suggestion that such conventions should be used in interface design. “Semantic coherence is clearly more advantageous than grouping. Spatial grouping in a semantically incoherent layout deteriorated recall of labels and locations… This indicates that if there are clear categories in which interface elements belong to, mixing them up in spatial groups may harm the user’s performance more than random, spatially spread positioning.” So, what's important to remember here is that people visual chunk up the screen and expect to find related items chunked together, and this helps them interact with the elements, and remember what's what.
This was another study where a target was presented and participants had to search to find the target on the screen. Half of the times the target was present and half of the time it wasn't. “After a number of trials where the position of the target item is varied in a controlled way, we can assess search time as a function of the position on the page. We can then reason about the strategy used for scanning the page. The output part of the interaction is kept constant; responses are always given by means of a mouse click.” The time it took the participant to make the decision was measured and logged.
“The speed of scanning a page of familiar layout improved about 25% with practice, but became stationary after about 200 trials. This shows that results from studies with a low number of trials must be viewed with caution when generalized to skilled performance.” It was easier for participants to find the target if it had a unique feature such as color, shade, size, and shape. “The fastest search is obtained when search space can be restricted by knowledge captured by the peripheral visual system. Highlighting, informative patterns and spatial constant positions are such design principles. Presenting data items in fixed positions on the screen, so that each position has a meaning, is thus useful for effective interaction.” The results also show that having sorted groups and fixing those groups to particular positions on the screen is an effective design principle.
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