interaction

This page looks at machine-user interaction and selected document design studies.

It covers -

• an introduction to interaction studies
• document design and perception research
• readability and white space
• menu and link placement

Further information about research into search behaviour appears here.

     introduction

User Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (Hillsdale: Erlbaum 1986), co-edited by Donald Norman, is a useful starting point for reading about how we deal with machines. Human Interaction with Complex Systems: Conceptual Principles & Design Practice (Hague: Kluwer 1996) by Celestine Ntuen & Eui Park is more demanding. Task-Centered User Interface Design - A Practical Introduction by Clayton Lewis & John Rieman is available online

Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques (Saddle Valley: Prentice-Hall 1994) by Kevin Mullet & Darrel Sano is an excellent introduction to interface principles. James Gibson's The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1979) is of particular importance in considering navigation aspects of electronic texts and new information devices.

We have mentioned Ben Schneiderman's Designing The User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (Reading: Addison-Wesley 1998) and the shorter, more abstract Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (New York: Norton 1998) by Donald Hoffman.

The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) and Interactions Online, the quarterly interactive product design journal published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), are also recommended. Both journals are of particular interest to specialists.  

The ACM's Human-Computer Interaction Bibliography (HCIB) is exhaustive. A useful thematic introduction is provided by the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (Great Barrington: Berkshire 2004) edited by William Bainbridge.

Patricia Wallace's The Psychology of the Internet (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) and Adam Joinson's Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002) provide a readable introduction to how people behave online. From a design perspective there's perhaps more depth in The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television & New Media Like Real People & Places (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1996) by Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass. The Digital Environment guide on this site points to other studies such as Intermedia: Interpersonal Communication in a Media World (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1986) edited by Gary Gumpert & Robert Cathcart.

Jakob Nielsen's November 2000 Alertbox comments 

Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons: it makes bad design more likely, it breaks with the Web’s fundamental interaction style, and it consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site’s core value.

There's a response in Macromedia's White Paper on usability.

     document design and perception studies

Karen Schriver's Dynamics In Document Design (New York: Wiley 1997) is empirically based, has an extensive bibliography of recent literature and while primarily concerned with print contains much of value for the online world. 

Our profile on the book and the print revolution includes works such as Tschichold's masterful The Form of the Book (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks 1995) that are of value in understanding design, online and offline. 

WebReview explores font and other issues, although primarily aimed at web builders.

One of the more interesting studies of how people use sites is underway in the US at the moment; preliminary reports are available. The research is being conducted by Stanford University and the Poynter Institute, an independent journalism teaching and research body. It provides a picture of how people actually use online news sites.  

Unsurprisingly the results - which draw on nearly one million clickstreams - are consistent with Nielsen's recommendations.

Donald Hoffman's Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (New York: Norton 1998) is an authoritative yet approachable study of cognition and visual perception. It is a useful starting point for understanding the science behind some of the usability studies in the accessibility guide elsewhere on this site.

Andrew Treloar's June 2000 paper on Spinning the Right Path: Investigating the Effectiveness & Impact of Web Navigation Systems offers an introduction to some navigation questions. Paul Kahn's Mapping Websites: Design for the Internet (Hove: Rotovision 2001) is a study of site navigation. Jakob Nielsen's 2002 Alertbox more succinctly reported on site maps, noting that most maps fail to communicate multiple levels of a site's architecture and that users often overlook site maps or can't find them.

Michael Bernard's research on Examining User Expectations of the Location of Web Objects questions criticisms of the 'Nielsenisation' of the web, commenting that

... it is clear that users do have definable expectations concerning the location of these web objects. Moreover, the results suggest that these expectations are, in part, based on user experience. ...

1) the internal web page links are generally expected to be located on the upper left side of the browser window,

2) the external web page links are general expected to be located on the right side or lower left side of the browser window,

3) the "back to home" link is generally expected to be located at the top-left corner and the bottom-center of the browser window,

4) the internal search engine is generally expected to be located at the top-center of the screen, and

5) advertisement banners are generally expected to be located at the top of the browser window.

His empirical work with Baker, Chaparro & Fernandez on Paging vs. scrolling: examining ways to present search results (PDF) is also of particular interest.

Gary Klein's Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) offers another perspective.

     readability and white space

Finding Information on the Web: Does the Amount of Whitespace Really Matter?, a paper by Michael Bernard, Barbara Chaparro & R. Thomasson gently questions Jared Spool's suggestion that online, white space probably doesn't matter. There's a more detailed examination in Nielsen's work noted above.

There's increasing industry and academic interest in readability. One example is the US Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's 2001 report on about the readability of online bank privacy statements.

     menu and link placement

There's been surprisingly little empirical research regarding menu design and placement, whose challenges are highlighted in Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

The 2001 article by Michael Bernard, Spring Hull & Denise Drake on Where Should You Put the Links? A Comparison of Four Locations reports on a study of whether it is most effective to embed 'associative' links within the text on a page (our practice in this site), in the margin or at the bottom of the page.

Testing suggested that although placement did not fundamentally affect the navigability of an online document (in terms of search accuracy, time or efficiency), there were clear subjective differences.

Participants believed embedding links within a document made it "easier to navigate, easier to recognize key information, easier to follow the main idea of the passages, and promoted comprehension". They preferred embedded to the other formats. Placement of links at the bottom of a document was perceived by the test panel as being the least navigable arrangement and thus consequently least preferred.

Two studies by Don Dillman and associates are of particular interest (others are highlighted in the Research page of the Web Marketing guide). A 1998 paper (PDF) by Dillman, Robert Tortora, John Conradt & Dennis Bowker reports on the Influence of Plain vs. Fancy Design on Response Rates for Web Surveys suggested that 'plain is better'. Dillman & Bowker's 2000 paper (PDF) on An Experimental Evaluation of Left and Right Oriented Screens for Web Questionnaires explored orientation issues.



    next page (standards)