First impressions of web pages

Software	HTML and CSS and JavaScript, perhaps also a server-side scripting language like ASP or PHP.
Covers	Human computer interaction, experimental procedures, some web programming.
Skills Required	Simple web programming, interest in HCI.
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ?? Programming ?

Brief Description

The aim of this project is to implement a way to show people web pages for very brief periods of time, and then use it to study their perceptions of the web pages' attractiveness, usability and other properties such as professionalism and trustworthiness, to see how the design of the web page influences their first impressions.

The balance between doing system development and doing research can vary according to the interests of the student. This project will require competence with HTML and CSS, and some simple JavaScript, but doesn't require anything resembling a masters project coding effort. However more elaborate and sophisticated and smoother running experimental procedures might benefit from a more elaborate delivery system for brief exposures to web pages.

Several experimental studies have shown that experimental subjects who see web pages for as little as 50 milliseconds can form impressions of their attractiveness and usability that are fairly reliable predictors of the impressions they form after longer opportunities to look at the web pages. The challenge of this project is to extend this work to see if these results replicate, and to produce novel findings about how the design of web pages influences perceptions that might bias how people interact with ecommerce websites. Part of the challenge is thinking about what perceptual impressions to try to measure, and how: summing up aesthetic effects as 'attractiveness' is far too crude a view of how perceptions influence attitudes and emotions. Done well enough, this could form the basis of a published research paper.

Resources

To get started, take a look at

Lindegaard, G., Fernandes, G., Dudek, C. and Brown, J. (2006)
Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression.
Behaviour and Information Technology, 25, 115-126.

Tractinsky, N., Cockhavi, A., Kirschenbaum, M. and Sharfi, T. (2006)
Evaluating the consistency of immediate aesthetic perceptions of web pages
Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 64, 1071-1083.

Tuch, A.N., Presslaber, E.E., Stöcklin, M., Opwis, K. and Bargas-Avila, J.A. (2012).
The role of visual complexity and prototypicality regarding first impression of websites:
Working towards understanding aesthetic judgments
Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 70, 794-811.

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