The experiment was conducted using stimulus interfaces created from real web pages that we modified. For each page, we created a version with strong signifiers and a version with weak signifiers.
Heatmaps are quantitative visualizations that aggregate the number and duration of eye fixations on a stimulus (UI). Heatmaps require a relatively large number of participants to be reliable (around 30). In our color coding, the red areas received the most and longest fixations. Orange, yellow, and purple areas received less attention, and areas with no overlay color were not viewed by any of the test participants.
We took 9 web pages from live websites and modified them to create two nearly identical versions of each page, with the same layout, content and visual style. The two versions — only differed in the use of strong, weak, or absent signifiers on the interactive elements (buttons, links, tabs, sliders). The goal of the study was to create realistic but modified versions of the designs, for a clean comparison of strong and weak signifiers, not to test the designs of the live pages.
Page Pairs with Different User Gaze Patterns
Brilliant Earth
Task: “You will see a jewelry site. Find the pearl jewelry.”
Barnes & Noble
Task: “You will see a bookshop website. Find the recently-released books they sell.”
Cosmo
Task: “You will see a page from a hotel website. Reserve this hotel room.”
Hertz
Task: “Imagine you reserved a rental car. You will see the rental company’s website. Cancel the reservation.”
Nest
Task: “Imagine you recently purchased a Nest thermostat. Find out when it will be delivered.”
Priceline
Task: “You will see a page of airline flights. Limit the results so that you see only flights that leave between 8:00AM and 3:00PM.”
Page Pairs with Nearly Identical User Gaze Patterns
Ally Bank
Task: “Pretend you just received a new credit card. You will see the bank’s website. Activate your card online.”
Conservation International
Task: “You will see the website for a non-profit organization. Donate to this organization.”
Sunglass Hut
Task: “You will see a webpage for a pair of sunglasses. Show those sunglasses in a different color.”
