Page Layout Of Eye Movement Research Effects On Visual Search

With the growing popularity and widespread application of Internet, visual search in webpage environment is perceived as a hot academic topic. It is not only to do with vision-related cognitive factors, but also can be influenced by webpage layout and other factors. This research aimed to elaborate webpage layout factors and their influence over visual search efficiency with eye movement technology.On the basis of related references and previous researches, the current research have found differences between participants’visual search efficiency and subjective satisfaction from various webpage layouts with manipulating two important webpage layout factors, webpage density and search target locations in webpage, and balancing variables such as webpage types, Internet using experience of participants.In Experiment1,28participants were selected, and the experiment was to discuss in artificial webpage materials and text context, how the webpage layout factors influence participants" visual search efficiency, with2(webpage density:high density, low density) X4(search target location:four quadrants in a webpage) within subject design. In Experiment2,32participants were selected, and the experiment discussed in real webpage materials and text context, how webpage layout factors influence participants’visual search efficiency, with2(webpage density:high density, low density) X2(search target location:upper and lower parts within webpage) within subject design. In Experiment3,30participants were selected, and the experiment discussed in real webpage materials and image context, how webpage layout factors influence participants’visual search efficiency, using2(webpage density:high density, low density) X6(search target location:six subareas within webpage) within subject design. Meanwhile, Experiment2and3analyzed the subjective satisfaction towards different webpage types. Tobii T120Eye Tracker was used in these three experiments.Research conclusions for the experiments can be summarized as follows:(1)Participants" visual search efficiency in high-density webpage is much lower than that in low-density webpage.(2)Locations of search targets excerpt significant influence on visual search efficiency: when the text targets located in the right upper part of artificial materials webpage. visual search showed higher efficiency; when the text targets located in the upper half part of real materials webpage, visual search showed higher efficiency:when the image targets located in the lower one third part of real materials webpage, visual search showed higher efficiency.(3)In real webpage, participants’satisfaction from high density webpage was higher than that from low density webpage.