Depth vs Breadth in the Arrangement of Web Links

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of depth and breadth of web site structure on the user response time.

Mtei, Lianaeli and Panayiotis Zaphiris. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

Effects of Link Arrangement on Search Efficiency

The subjects that used the 155-link Web pages had a significantly faster search time using a three-column link arrangement, while the two-column link arrangement had the slowest search time. Results for the 30-link Web pages did not show a significant difference in search times for any specific link arrangement.

Dietrich, Jon, Karen Gordon and Marc Wexler. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Facilitating Data Exploration with Query Previews: A Study of User Performance and Preference

Current networked and local data exploration systems that use command languages (e.g. SQL), menus, or form fillin interfaces do not give users an indication of the distribution of data in their databases. This often leads users to waste time, posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Query previews are a novel visual approach for browsing and querying networked or local databases. Query previews supply users with data distribution information for selected attributes of a database, and give continuous feedback about the size of the result set as the query is being formed. Subsequent refinements might be necessary to narrow the search sufficiently. Because there is a risk that query previews are an additional step, leading to a more complex and slow search process, we ran a within subjects empirical study with 12 subjects who used interfaces with and without query previews and with no network delays. Even with this small number of subjects and minimized network delays we found statistically significant differences showing that query previews could speed up performance 1.6 to 2.1 times and lead to higher subjective satisfaction.

Tanin, Egemen, Amnon Lotem, Ihab Haddadin, Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant and Laura Slaughter. SHORE (1999). Design>User Interface>Usability>Search

Help Strategies and Their Effect on Graphical Icon Usage

An increasingly popular component of modern graphical human-computer interfaces are graphical command buttons. Studies have shown that graphical command buttons can enhance user productivity. However, two factors, the time required to acquire a working knowledge of the graphical command set and the need for frequent use to maintain the knowledge limit the effectiveness of graphical command buttons as a user interface strategy. This study attempts to quantify the effects of four types of help (balloon style, a mouse documentation line at the bottom of the screen, a help browser, and hardcopy documentation) on the ability of novice users to acquire a working knowledge of a graphical command set. The study did not find any significant difference (based on the anova and manova tests) between the four treatments.

McAlister, Britt and Chavi Greengart. SHORE (1997). Design>Documentation>Human Computer Interaction>Help

The Optimal Thumbnail

Thumbnails are minature representations of an image or page. They provide a convenient way to electronically "thumb" through many images/pages before retrieving the one you need. In this experiment, we measured subjects' recognition speed to thumbnails of five sizes.

SHORE (1997). Design>Document Design>Information Design

Screen Size and Web Browsing

The purpose of this experiment is to determine the effect of screen size on the speed of navigating common web pages. We performed the experiment on 12 students and concluded that the larger the screen size, the faster a typical web page is browsed.

DiPierro, Chris, George N. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>Usability>Web Browsers

WebTOC: Evaluation of a Hierarchical Browsing Interface for the World Wide Web

With the rapid growth of the World Wide Web and the development of hierarchical web sites, it has become difficult for users to get an overview of the contents and structure of web sites because of their growing size and complexity. To alleviate this problem, an application called WebTOC was developed at the Human Computer Interaction Lab(HCIL) at the University of Maryland. This application provides a graphical description of the hierarchy of a web site and gives a breakdown of the types of data available at the site (text, video, audio, etc.). The paper presents a study comparing WebTOC with a textual table of contents and no contents page. This experiment found no statistically significant differences between interfaces, but we suspect the main factor in this result is the limited availability of subjects (21 subjects altogether - only seven subjects were tested per treatment). The subjective satisfaction surveys showed a preference for WebTOC. This paper presents a number of lessons learned and makes several recommendations for further study of WebTOC.

Heflin, Jeff, Anita Komlodi, Nakul Pasricha and Theen-Theen Tan. SHORE (1997). Design>Web Design>Information Design

The Effect of Screen Size on Readability Using Three Different Portable Devices

As small portable computing devices become more prevalent in society, the readability of text available on such devices becomes of increasing concern. This paper describes two experiments that compare the readability of text presented on three portable devices, a laptop, a Rocket Book, and a Palm Pilot. The first experiment involved a visual search task on one page of text while the second experiment required scrolling (or paging) of text. We hoped to discover whether reading speed was affected by screen size when text was presented with and without the need for scrolling. We also hoped to determine whether error rates were correlated to screen size. Finally, we wished to investigate issues of user satisfaction as they related to the different devices.

Chung, I-Hsin, Erica Kolatch, Sofia Sculimbrene and Hui-Fang Wen. SHORE 2000 (2000). Articles>Typography>Wireless Web>Usability