research-article

A comparison of visual and textual page previews in judging the helpfulness of web pages

Authors:

Peter HongAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '10: Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web

Pages 51 - 60

https://doi.org/10.1145/1772690.1772697

Published: 26 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

We investigated the efficacy of visual and textual web page previews in predicting the helpfulness of web pages related to a specific topic. We ran two studies in the usability lab and collected data through an online survey. Participants (total of 245) were asked to rate the expected helpfulness of a web page based on a preview (four different thumbnail variations: a textual web page summary, a thumbnail/title/URL combination, a title/URL combination). In the lab studies, the same participants also rated the helpfulness of the actual web pages themselves. In the online study, the web page ratings were collected from a separate group of participants. Our results show that thumbnails add information about the relevance of web pages that is not available in the textual summaries of web pages (title, snippet & URL). However, showing only thumbnails, with no textual information, results in poorer performance than showing only textual summaries. The prediction inaccuracy caused by textual vs. visual previews was different: textual previews tended to make users overestimate the helpfulness of web pages, whereas thumbnails made users underestimate the helpfulness of web pages in most cases. In our study, the best performance was obtained by combining sufficiently large thumbnails (at least 200x200 pixels) with page titles and URLs - and it was better to make users focus primarily on the thumbnail by placing the title and URL below the thumbnail. Our studies highlighted four key aspects that affect the performance of previews: the visual/textual mode of the previews, the zoom level and size of the thumbnail, as well as the positioning of key information elements.

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Cited By

Taieb-Maimon M(2025)Enhancing Snippet Visualizations to Improve Web SearchInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2443267(1-20)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2443267
Sasaoka TYamakata YTajima K(2024)Search Result Presentation for Non-Native Language DocumentsCompanion Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640544.3645224(89-94)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640544.3645224
Kim HKim JHan YHong HKwon OPark YElmqvist NKo SKwon B(2024)Towards Visualization Thumbnail Designs That Entice Reading Data-Driven ArticlesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.327830430:8(4825-4840)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3278304
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Index Terms

A comparison of visual and textual page previews in judging the helpfulness of web pages
1. Applied computing
  1. Document management and text processing
    1. Document preparation
      1. Multi / mixed media creation
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces
      2. Hypertext / hypermedia
  2. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. User centered design

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

WWW '10: Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web

April 2010

1407 pages

ISBN:9781605587998

DOI:10.1145/1772690

General Chairs:
Michael Rappa
North Carolina State University, USA
,
Paul Jones
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Juliana Freire
University of Utah, USA
,
Soumen Chakrabarti
Indian Institute of Technology, India

Copyright © 2010 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2).

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 April 2010

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WWW '10

WWW '10: The 19th International World Wide Web Conference

April 26 - 30, 2010

North Carolina, Raleigh, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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Cited By

Taieb-Maimon M(2025)Enhancing Snippet Visualizations to Improve Web SearchInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2024.2443267(1-20)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2024.2443267
Sasaoka TYamakata YTajima K(2024)Search Result Presentation for Non-Native Language DocumentsCompanion Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3640544.3645224(89-94)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640544.3645224
Kim HKim JHan YHong HKwon OPark YElmqvist NKo SKwon B(2024)Towards Visualization Thumbnail Designs That Entice Reading Data-Driven ArticlesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.327830430:8(4825-4840)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2023.3278304
Ataman CPerrault STunçer B(2024)Fostering Inclusive Urban Design and Planning: Enhanced Trust and Reliability through Descriptive Instructions for Digital Citizen ParticipationJournal of Urban Technology10.1080/10630732.2024.242172931:4-5(25-48)Online publication date: 29-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2024.2421729
Jones SKlein MWeigle MNelson M(2023)Summarizing Web Archive Corpora via Social Media Storytelling by Automatically Selecting and Visualizing ExemplarsACM Transactions on the Web10.1145/360603018:1(1-48)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3606030
Han LChen TDemartini GIndulska MSadiq S(2023)A Data-Driven Analysis of Behaviors in Data Curation ProcessesACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/356741941:3(1-35)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3567419
Oppermann MMunzner T(2022)VizSnippets: Compressing Visualization Bundles Into Representative Previews for Browsing Visualization CollectionsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2021.311484128:1(747-757)Online publication date: Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3114841
Alli M(2021)Ambiguity and ClarificationResult Page Generation for Web Searching10.4018/978-1-7998-0961-6.ch004(28-42)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-0961-6.ch004
Kakar TQin XLa TSahoo SDe SRundensteiner EHarrison L(2021)SumRe: Design and Evaluation of a Gist‐based Summary Visualization for Incident Reports TriageComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1430540:3(263-274)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2021
https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14305
Han LChen TDemartini GIndulska MSadiq SHuang JChang YCheng XKamps JMurdock VWen JLiu Y(2020)On Understanding Data Worker Interaction BehaviorsProceedings of the 43rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval10.1145/3397271.3401059(269-278)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3397271.3401059
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