To find out what the visitors of the webshop of Harolds actually see when they look at the webshop, we performed three types of tests. These are the type of tests that can be found in psychological literature, namely ‘change blindness’, ‘visual search’ and ‘eye-tracking’.
In this post we will take you through the method and results of the "change blindness" test.
Goal
To know which elements on the website are faster noticed than others, we are going to measure how long it takes before the participants find which element is left out.
Method
The principle of the change blindness test is the following: during the test, two screens alternate in very short time-spans. On one of the screens, an element is left out. The participant has to find the element that is left out and click on the location of this element.
For the test, we will use the Processing-file that is provided for the course. We will execute the test with 10 participants. At the start of the test, the participant is told that he will be shown a website where something is left out and that he has to click on the place of the element that is left out. The test will be executed with 6 sets of screens:
In this post we will take you through the method and results of the "change blindness" test.
Goal
To know which elements on the website are faster noticed than others, we are going to measure how long it takes before the participants find which element is left out.
Method
The principle of the change blindness test is the following: during the test, two screens alternate in very short time-spans. On one of the screens, an element is left out. The participant has to find the element that is left out and click on the location of this element.
For the test, we will use the Processing-file that is provided for the course. We will execute the test with 10 participants. At the start of the test, the participant is told that he will be shown a website where something is left out and that he has to click on the place of the element that is left out. The test will be executed with 6 sets of screens:
Results
For each participant, the time it took to find each missing aspect is measured. These results can be found in table 1. Furthermore, for each participant is made a ranking from which aspect is found fastest to which aspect is found slowest (table 2).
Discussion
As can be seen in table 1,when looking at the average time, the headings on the pictures (under the heading ‘Highlighted’ on the homepage) are found the fastest with an average time of 5.89 s. Second, the text column in the menu bar at the end of the homepage. After that, the logo, product description and product title are found fastest. The main menu is found slowest, with an average time of 37.83 s. What stands out, is that there is a large gap between the second-to-last and last found aspect.
Looking at table 2, it differs for each participant which aspect they found the fastest. However, when looking at the headings, the headings are mostly found fastest. Furthermore, the main menu is mostly found slowest.
The results of this test are unexpected, as we thought that the logo and main menu would be found fastest because they give crucial information, such as the webshop name and the menu structure. This means we have to pay extra attention to the visibility of the logo and main menu in the redesigns. That the headings were found fastest, could be because the headings were located in the middle of the page we showed the participants.That the main menu is found slowest could be caused due to the fact that the participants were not actually using the webshop. If they were, they might have seen the main menu earlier because they had to use it. Finally, we found it outstanding that it took a long time for the participants to find the product description and product title on the Promarker page, as they are important pieces of information about the product. Therefore, we will try to improve the visibility of the product description and product title in the redesigns.
The results of the change blindness test, in combination with the results of the visual search test and eye tracking test, will be used to set up a list of requirements for the functional and aesthetic redesign.
As can be seen in table 1,when looking at the average time, the headings on the pictures (under the heading ‘Highlighted’ on the homepage) are found the fastest with an average time of 5.89 s. Second, the text column in the menu bar at the end of the homepage. After that, the logo, product description and product title are found fastest. The main menu is found slowest, with an average time of 37.83 s. What stands out, is that there is a large gap between the second-to-last and last found aspect.
Looking at table 2, it differs for each participant which aspect they found the fastest. However, when looking at the headings, the headings are mostly found fastest. Furthermore, the main menu is mostly found slowest.
The results of this test are unexpected, as we thought that the logo and main menu would be found fastest because they give crucial information, such as the webshop name and the menu structure. This means we have to pay extra attention to the visibility of the logo and main menu in the redesigns. That the headings were found fastest, could be because the headings were located in the middle of the page we showed the participants.That the main menu is found slowest could be caused due to the fact that the participants were not actually using the webshop. If they were, they might have seen the main menu earlier because they had to use it. Finally, we found it outstanding that it took a long time for the participants to find the product description and product title on the Promarker page, as they are important pieces of information about the product. Therefore, we will try to improve the visibility of the product description and product title in the redesigns.
The results of the change blindness test, in combination with the results of the visual search test and eye tracking test, will be used to set up a list of requirements for the functional and aesthetic redesign.