Searching for information: Comparing text vs. visual search with newspapers websites

Abstract

Different approaches used to define how a website shows information have an impact on how users evaluate its usability. As shown in the present study, how people accomplish a search of visual content in a newspaper website is an important factor to review while designing it. In this study, 47 participants were randomly assigned to evaluate one of two different newspaper websites and asked to do visual and written searches. The evaluation metrics were: task success and task time. Also the participants made an overall evaluation of the site, answering two Likert questions and an open-ended question to measure qualitative aspects. Finally, we measured the overall satisfaction with a SUS questionnaire. The results show that a poor performance in the search of visual content lead to lower usability perception, this might be a main aspect to improve when defining priorities to enhance overall usability.