What is the average time taken by people to complete each experiment?
Experiment
1: 52.38 seconds
Experiment 2: 37.48 seconds
Experiment 3: 38.63 seconds
How do the results of these two experiments compare to each other and with the results obtained in the first experiment?
Looking at this data we can see that the first experiment, on average, took the longest time to complete, then experiment 3, and finally experiment 2 took the least time to complete.
It makes sense that experiment 2 would take the least time to complete, as it highlighted the correct answer every time, making it easier for the user to spot the correct menu.
However, it seems as though experiment 3, where users had to be active participants, had an average time taken to complete the experiment lower than that of users of experiment 1. This may lead us to believe that when users are asked to be active participants, their attention levels are higher.
Did you encounter any difficulty in running the experiments or explaining the experiments to people?
We didn’t really encounter any major problems or difficulties during the experiments, just a few minor ones. One difficulty was trying to find people who were willing to do the experiment. We also had some people get confused by the dates (1.04.19997) as well as with the name Einstein (they thought Einstein was a name instead of a person). Also, some other people gave up after they couldn’t find what they were looking for, particularly with Experiment 3.
Can you suggest any similar experiment to assess how people allocates attention when working with computers?
We suggest using the following:
- Pictures to replace menu names (for example, apple to replace fruit, when asked to find fruit)
- Change the shape of the menu asked to find (eg. all are square and one is circle)
- Change the menu from bold to italics
- Color the text
- Move the menu to the middle, above, or by itself