Toward a definition of visual complexity as an implicit measure of cognitive load

Subscribe (Full Service)


	Search: The ACM Digital Library The Guide

	Feedback

Toward a definition of visual complexity as an implicit measure of cognitive load

Full text

Pdf (2.95 MB)

Source

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP) archive
Volume 6 , Issue 2 (February 2009) table of contents

Article No. 10

Year of Publication: 2009

ISSN:1544-3558

Authors

Simon Harper	University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Eleni Michailidou	University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Robert Stevens	University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

Bibliometrics

Downloads (6 Weeks): 37, Downloads (12 Months): 265, Citation Count: 0

Additional Information:

abstract references index terms collaborative colleagues

Tools and Actions:	Request Permissions Review this Article Save this Article to a Binder Display Formats: BibTeX EndNote ACM Ref

DOI Bookmark:	Use this link to bookmark this Article: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1498700.1498704 What is a DOI?

ABSTRACT

The visual complexity of Web pages is much talked about; “complex Web pages are difficult to use,” but often regarded as a subjective decision by the user. This subjective decision is of limited use if we wish to understand the importance of visual complexity, what it means, and how it can be used. We theorize that by understanding a user's visual perception of Web page complexity, we can understand the cognitive effort required for interaction with that page. This is important because by using an easily identifiable measure, such as visual complexity, as an implicit marker of cognitive load, we can design Web pages which are easier to interact with. We have devised an initial empirical experiment, using card sorting and triadic elicitation, to test our theories and assumptions, and have built an initial baseline sequence of 20 Web pages along with a library of qualitative and anecdotal feedback. Using this library, we define visual complexity, ergo perceived interaction complexity, and by taking these pages as “prototypes” and ranking them into a sequence of complexity, we are able to group them into: simple, neutral, and complex. This means we can now work toward a definition of visual complexity as an implicit measure of cognitive load.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Einat Amitay , David Carmel , Adam Darlow , Ronny Lempel , Aya Soffer, The connectivity sonar: detecting site functionality by structural patterns, Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, August 26-30, 2003, Nottingham, UK [doi>10.1145/900051.900060]
	2	Chieko Asakawa, What's the web like if you can't see it?, Proceedings of the 2005 International Cross-Disciplinary Workshop on Web Accessibility (W4A), May 10-10, 2005, Chiba, Japan [doi>10.1145/1061811.1061813]
	3	Asakawa, C. and Lewis, C. 1998. Home page reader: IBM's talking web browser. In Proceedings of the Closing the Gap Conference.
	4	Brambring, M. 1984. Mobility and orientation processes of the blind. In Electronic Spatial Sensing for the Blind, D. H. Warren and E. R. Strelow, Eds. Springer, New York, 493--508.
	5	Chaomei Chen, Structuring and visualising the WWW by generalised similarity analysis, Proceedings of the eighth ACM conference on Hypertext, p.177-186, April 06-11, 1997, Southampton, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/267437.267456]
	6	Linn Marks, Integrative multimedia design, Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems, p.383-384, April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/259963.260516]
	7	DRC. 2004. Disability rights commission. The web: Access and inclusion for disabled people. http://www.drcgb.org/publicationsandreports/2.pdf.
	8	Pete Faraday , Alistair Sutcliffe, Making contact points between text and images, Proceedings of the sixth ACM international conference on Multimedia, p.29-37, September 13-16, 1998, Bristol, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/290747.290752]
	9	Fischer, S. 1996. Multimedia Authoring. Academic Press Professional, St. Louis, MO.
	10	Fodor, J. and Lepore, E. 1996. The red herring and the pet fish: why concepts still can't be prototypes. Cognition 58, 2, 253--270.
	11	Freedman, M. 1984. Eye movement communication systems for computer control. In Proceedings of the International Congress on Technology & Technology Exchange: Technology and the World Around Us. IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 34--35.
	12	Friedman, A. 1979. Framing pictures: the role of knowledge in automatized encoding and memory for gist. J. Exper. Psych. Gen. 108, 316--355.
	13	Richard Furuta , Frank M. Shipman, III , Catherine C. Marshall , Donald Brenner , Hao-wei Hsieh, Hypertext paths and the World-Wide Web: experiences with Walden's Paths, Proceedings of the eighth ACM conference on Hypertext, p.167-176, April 06-11, 1997, Southampton, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/267437.267455]
	14	Germonprez, M. and Zigurs, I. 2003. Causal factors for web site complexity. Working Papers on Information Environments, Systems and Organizations 3.
	15	Laura A. Granka , Thorsten Joachims , Geri Gay, Eye-tracking analysis of user behavior in WWW search, Proceedings of the 27th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, July 25-29, 2004, Sheffield, United Kingdom [doi>10.1145/1008992.1009079]
	16	Simon Harper , Neha Patel, Gist summaries for visually impaired surfers, Proceedings of the 7th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, October 09-12, 2005, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1090785.1090804]
	17	Heaps, C. and Handel, C. H. 1999. Similarity and features of natural textures. J. Exper. Psych. Hum. Percept. Perform. 25, 299--320.
	18	Henderson, J. M., Weeks, P. A., and Hollingworth, A. 1999. The effects of semantic consistency on eye movements during complex scene viewing. J. Exper. Psych. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1, 210--228.
	19	Heylighen, F. 1997. The Growth of Structural and Functional Complexity during Evolution. Springer, New York.
	20	Ralf Hoffmann , Kirstin Krauss, A critical evaluation of literature on visual aesthetics for the web, Proceedings of the 2004 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries, p.205-209, October 04-06, 2004, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa
	21	Signe Hoffos , Philip Smith , Graham Sharpless , Nicholas Lewis, CD-I Designers Guide, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1992
	22	Sarah Horton, Designing beneath the surface of the web, Proceedings of the 2006 international cross-disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A): Building the mobile web: rediscovering accessibility?, May 22-22, 2006, Edinburgh, U.K. [doi>10.1145/1133219.1133221]
	23	Melody Y. Ivory , Rodrick Megraw, Evolution of web site design patterns, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.23 n.4, p.463-497, October 2005 [doi>10.1145/1095872.1095876]
	24	Ivory, M. Y., Sinha, R. R., and Hearst, M. A. 2000. Preliminary findings on quantitative measures for distinguishing highly rated information-centric web pages. In Proceedings of 6th Conference on Human Factors and the Web.
	25	Melody Y. Ivory , Rashmi R. Sinha , Marti A. Hearst, Empirically validated web page design metrics, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.53-60, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365035]
	26	Robert J. K. Jacob, The use of eye movements in human-computer interaction techniques: what you look at is what you get, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.9 n.2, p.152-169, April 1991 [doi>10.1145/123078.128728]
	27	Robert J. K. Jacob, Eye tracking in advanced interface design, Virtual environments and advanced interface design, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, NY, 1995
	28	Caroline Jay , Robert Stevens , Mashhuda Glencross , Alan Chalmers, How people use presentation to search for a link: expanding the understanding of accessibility on the web, Proceedings of the 2006 international cross-disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A): Building the mobile web: rediscovering accessibility?, May 22-22, 2006, Edinburgh, U.K. [doi>10.1145/1133219.1133241]
	29	Just, M. A. and Carpenter, P. A. 1980. A theory of reading: From eye fixations to comprehension. Psych. Rev. 87, 329--354.
	30	Just, M. A. and Carpenter, P. A. 1987. The Psychology of Reading and Language Comprehension. Allyn and Bacon, Boston.
	31	Kamp, H. and Partee, B. 1995. Prototype theory and compositionality. Cognition 57, 2, 129--191.
	32	Krauss, K. 2004. Visual aesthetics and its effect on communication intent: a theoretical study and website evaluation. In Proceedings of the Southern African Computer Lecturers Association (SACLA).
	33	Talia Lavie , Noam Tractinsky, Assessing dimensions of perceived visual aesthetics of web sites, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.60 n.3, p.269-298, March 2004 [doi>10.1016/j.ijhcs.2003.09.002]
	34	Lie, H. W. and Bos, B. 1999. Cascading Style Sheets, level 1. WWW. http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1.
	35	Lohse, G. L. and Johnson, E. J. 1996. A comparison of two process tracing methods for choice tasks. Organizational Behav. Hum. Decision Processes 68, 1, 28--43.
	36	McCarthy, J. D., Sasse, A. M., and Riegelsberger, J. 2003. Could I Have the Menu Please? An eye tracking study of design conventions. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI2003). Springer, New York, 8--12.
	37	McConkie, G. W. and Currie, C. B. 1996. Visual stability across saccades while viewing complex pictures. J. Exper. Psych. Hum. Percept. Perform. 22, 3, 563--581.
	38	Merriam-Webster. 2006. Merriam-webster online dictionary.
	39	Muller-Brockmann, J. 1981. Grid Systems in Graphic Design. Stuttgart, Verlag Gerd Hatje.
	40	Oliva, A. 2005. Gist of a Scene. In Neurobiology of Attention, Itti, L., Rees, G., and Tsotsos, J. K., Eds. Academic Press, St. Louis, MO, 251--256.
	41	Oliva, A., Mack, M. L., Shrestha, M., and Peeper, A. 2004. Identifying the perceptual dimensions of visual complexity of scenes. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
	42	Outing, S. and Ruel, L. 2006. Eyetrack III: What We Saw Through Their Eyes. A Project of the Poynter Institute. http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm.
	43	Peter Plessers , Sven Casteleyn , Yeliz Yesilada , Olga De Troyer , Robert Stevens , Simon Harper , Carole Goble, Accessibility: a Web engineering approach, Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web, May 10-14, 2005, Chiba, Japan [doi>10.1145/1060745.1060799]
	44	Potter, M. C. 1976. Short-term conceptual memory for pictures. J. Exper. Psych. Hum. Learn. Memory 2, 509--522.
	45	Rayner, K. 1998. Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psych. Bull. 124, 3, 372--422.
	46	RNIB. 1996. A short guide to blindness. Booklet. http://www.rnib.org.uk.
	47	Russo, E. J. and Leclerc, F. 1994. An eye-fixation analysis of choice processes for consumer nondurables. J. Consum. Res. 21, 2.
	48	Sanders, M. G., Simmons, R. R., Andhoffman, M. A. 1979. Visual workload of the copilot/navigator during terrain flight. Hum. Factors 21, 2, 369--383.
	49	Taylor, J. R., Smelser, N. J., and Baltes, P. B. 2001. Linguistics: Prototype Theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 8954--8957.
	50	Zettl, H. 1999. Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Florence, KY.