Nora Paul, Director, Institute for New Media Studies

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Multimedia Storytelling When is it worth it and
how to you know if your site is user-friendly?
Nora Paul, Director, Institute for New Media
Studies University of Minnesota - npaul_at_umn.edu
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A Little Background

• Collaboration with Laura Ruel
• First study 2006 dynamic vs passive design
• Funding by the Digital Technology Center
• Breaking news design
• Supplemental links design
• Story page information density
• Slideshow navigation
• Eyetracking Research Consortium

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What is eyetracking?Why use it?
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Eyetracking equipment
Eyetracking equipment
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By-products of eyetracking
CLEARVIEW ANALYSIS SOFTWARE
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Three kinds of studies

• Usability can people do it?
• Experience what do people do?
• Comparison what works better?

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Usability
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The Online Design Challenge

• The location of visual elements in the User
  Interface (UI) has a huge impact on how the user
  interprets information. Rick Oppedisan
• The design of good houses requires an
  understanding of both the construction materials
  and the behavior of real humans.
• Peter Morville

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The Online Design Challenge THE PATH
TO A CLICK
100
SEE
NOTICE
...... 50
Discoverabilty
PARSE
... 25
Learnability
EVALUATE
Mental Models
..... 12.5
CLICK
...6.25
Appropriateness
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See Notice Parse Evaluate - Click
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Sees.but doesnt notice
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User Experience Navigation of Slide Shows
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What we did
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galleri
es/091506/korda/index.html
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What we did
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galleri
es/091506/korda/index.html
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What we did
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galleri
es/091506/korda/index.html
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What we did
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galleri
es/091506/korda/index.html
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What we did
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What we found
Navigation Preference Next 19 (56) Numbers
8 (23) Arrows 5 (15) Autoplay 2 (
6) Thumbnail 0

• Time Spent
• Next 234
• Arrow 331
• Numbers 216
• aver. 249

• Number of Slides Viewed
• Next 28 (70)
• Arrow 25 (62)
• Numbers 12 (30)

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What we found

• Two non-linear navigation methods
• Eight used numbers
• Four clicked in order (viewed 20 slides)
• Four clicked randomly (viewed 6 slides)

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Comparison Studies

• Breaking News designation
• Supplemental Links placement
• Story Page Information Density

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What we did
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What we did
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What we did
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What we did

• Participants 96
• Locations
• Instructions
• Process
• Analysis

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What we did

• Analysis
• Examined eyetracking video
• Created a coding sheet of observations
• Examined the survey results to see how it
  synced with eyetracking video

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What we did
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What we found Updates
Ratio
Saw the visual cue Read the headline Recalled
the headline
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What we found Updates
Ratio
Saw the visual cue Read the headline Recalled
the headline
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What we found Updates
Visual cues Biggers better In visual
designation of breaking news box was most
viewed by users. Bigger was better. But in
recall, the box was the least the headline was
smallest type.
Ratio
Saw the visual cue Read the headline Recalled
the headline
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What we found Updates
Size / position 10.53
Other 8.42
Photo 8.42
Design
Familiarity 9.47
Clicked 5.26
Surprise / emotion 9.47
Personal
Some of the keys to recall were design based
(place on page, photo) but personal interests and
background were the most compelling factors in
story recall.
Proximity 6.32
Personal Interest 41.05
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What does this mean?What else do we need to
know?
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What we found Links

• Did they see it?
• bottom box page users who fixated 59.1
• sidebar page users who fixated 36.4
• Did they read it?
• No statistical significance to number of links
  read
• sidebar aver. of 1.00 link read
• bottom box aver. of 1.18 links
  read
• Did they click it?
• Only 4 subjects clicked on supplemental links
• 2 sidebar page users
• 2 embedded link users
• 0 bottom box users

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What we found Links
Participants viewing the story with embedded
links were more likely to recall the existence
of links than those who viewed other link
presentation styles.
When asked in general how often they use related
or supplemental links, on a scale of 1-5, the
average was 3.12.
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What does this mean?What else do we need to
know?
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Information Density
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Why we researched this

• Questions
• Can there be too many links?
• Whats the impact?
• In peoples behavior
• In whats remembered

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Version 1Original Version 2 Embedded links
stripped Version 3 Text and Story Tools only
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What we found

• Embedded links - the high condition users
  remembered the embedded links (86)
• But so did 38 of the medium condition users
  (even though there werent any on the page!)
• The high condition group also remembered related
  stories existed more than others
• 80 for high v. 39 for medium

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What we found

• What they recalled being able to do
• Email 15
• Print - 37
• Share 31

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What we found
But what about the low condition?
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What we found
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What does this mean?What else do we need to
know?
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Consortium Research- User Experience

• San Jose Mercury News / Contra Costa Times
• Las Vegas Sun
• Minneapolis Star Tribune

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Jakobs Factoids

• 75
• of people who dont scroll down below the first
  screen

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Why this matters

• Did you see something about Things to Do a
  calendar feature?
• San Jose Mercury News
• 8 out of 11 said they didnt see anything like
  that
• ITS BELOW THE SCROLL

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Jakobs Factoids

• 20
• The number of words most visitors read on any
  home page

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Jakobismfactoids

• 0
• Number of ads people will look at on a web page

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What story links do they click on?

• 14 participants 58 stories clicked on
• Photo / headline / blurb
• Photo / headline
• Head / blurb
• Headline only

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12
13
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San Jose Mercury News
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How do they move through the site?

• 14 participants 84 non-story clicks (58 story
  clicks)
• Top nav bar 63
• Back button 37

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What do people do online?
76.0 68.0 60.5 52.0 38.5 38.0 22.5 10.0
7.5

• Emailed to a friend
• Filled in a poll..
• Read a blog
• Listened to a Podcast..
• Commented on a board
• Sent email to a journalist.
• Signed up for RSS...
• Linked a story on Digg..
• Linked to del.icio.us...

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New Research Topics

• Information Density
• Slide show controls
• Story clicks
• Carousels

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What else do we need to know?
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• DISEL www.disel-project.org
• Useit.com