Effects of patterns of highlighted items on list search.
E. Nygren, A. Allard, M. Lind
Report no. 55, CMD, Uppsala University, 1995.
Abstract
If some of the information items on a structured computer display are highlighted,
they can form a figural pattern on the screen. In field studies of computer users at
work, we had observed that in some situations, interpretation of a display could be
made by mere recognition of such patterns. In two experiments we investigated how
figural patterns formed by highlighted items affected search time and visual process
ing time in simple decision making tasks. The information items critical for the deci
sion were either highlighted and formed a pattern, or, they were not highlighted and no
pattern was formed. The results show that search time, as well as visual processing
time was significantly and substantially shorter in the pattern conditions compared to
the control condition. A model which assumes that highlighting the critical items
causes sequential search to be replaced by pattern recognition, predicted the observed
response times well. Different methods of highlight: colour; shading; italic font;
smaller characters and empty space were equally efficient in reducing search time.
x
Search result appears here...