Older adults’ usage of web pages: Investigating effects of information structure on performance

Abstract

This study focuses on older adults’ usage of web pages. An experiment consisted of three information structures (the net structure, the tree structure, and the linear structure) was conducted to investigate effects of information structure (IS) on older adult’s performance. Three findings were found. First, the number of clicks was the fewest in the net-structure web page among three web pages. Older participants spent less time to complete the tasks in the linear-structure web page than the other two web pages. The number of clicks and the accuracy of participants answered the questions in the tree-structure web page were the highest among three web pages. Second, older participants’ performance of card sorting was positively correlated with the task completion time. And there was a positive correlation between spatial ability and the performance of older participants. Third, older participants showed the highest preference of the linear structure among three information structures. They always lost task targets in the tree-structure web page, especially when they needed to transfer from one branch of the tree structure to another branch. This indicated that a simple IS was better used and understood by older participants than a complicated one.