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Exploring the design criteria of website interfaces for gender
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 53 (2016) 306e311
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Exploring the design criteria of website interfaces for gender Chiuhsiang Joe Lin, Tsung-Ling Hsieh* Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei 106, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 17 June 2015 Received in revised form 19 February 2016 Accepted 21 February 2016
The interface is the major channel through which users to navigate a website to find information matching their needs; nevertheless, gender-specific preferences for websites interface design have not been sufficiently explored or evaluated based on comprehensive and systematic approaches in past research. This study investigated the website interface design criteria for users of different genders based on usability principles. Undergraduate and graduate students in Taiwan were selected as the target sample. A total of 236 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The results showed significant gender differences in scaling of the importance of website interface design criteria. The three most important website interface design criteria for males were compatibility, minimal action, and flexibility, whereas the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility, learnability, and user guidance. This paper discusses the possible explanations for the gender differences and their implications for website design. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gender Website interfaces Usability
1. Introduction A review of the literature reveals that individual differences significantly affect personal learning in hypermedia systems such as websites (McIlroy et al., 2001; Chen and Macredie, 2002; Chalmers, 2003). Among the individual differences, gender may be perceived and accommodated most easily by website interface designers (Hsu, 2006). Early studies confirmed that females reported less computer self-efficacy and more anxiety when using a computer, which presumably lessens satisfaction with computer use, and by association, with enjoyment of online shopping (Colley et al., 1994; Brosnan and Davidson, 1996; Jackson et al., 2001). Therefore, it also has been assumed widely, and often validated empirically, that females and males differ in their attitudes toward, comfort with, and anxiety about Internet technology (Rozell and Gardner III, 2000; Shaw and Gant, 2002; Sanchez-Franco, 2006; Mitra et al., 2005; Tuch et al., 2010). Several researchers have suggested that females might have less competence and a less positive attitude toward using the Internet than males (Sherman et al., 2000). It has also been reported that females have much higher anxiety about using the Internet than males do (Ong and Lai, 2006; Huang et al., 2013). Further research found that males reported a more satisfying online shopping
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.-L. Hsieh). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2016.02.002 0169-8141/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
experience than females did (Simon, 2001; Dittmar et al., 2004; Cyr and Bonanni, 2005). Although the point has been made that the gender gap on the Internet is related to the frequency of web usedthat is, females tend to use the Internet less frequently and less intensely than males do (Bimber, 2000)dsome studies have demonstrated that the frequency of access to and participation on the Internet is almost equal in the two genders (Jackson et al., 2001; Mitra et al., 2005). In fact, females visit certain websites, such as travel websites, more often than males do (Kim et al., 2007). Therefore, the gender gap on the Internet needs to be investigated further if it is to be explained. It is possible that the gender gap on the Internet is caused by differences in preferences for specific aspects of website interface design; that is, if the website interfaces are not designed to suit females, then female visitors will experience frustration and anxiety while navigating the website and thus have lower satisfaction. Previous research has reported that males and females have different preferences for website design. In an investigative study, Cyr and Bonanni (2005) reported that males preferred websites with well-presented information, easy navigation, and meaningful website animations. Moss et al. (2006) found that the website design preferences of males included formal typography and images, visible horizontal lines, and mainly black or blue color schemes; the preferences of females, on the other hand, included informal typography and images, invisible horizontal lines, and mainly pink, mauve, or yellow color schemes. Hsu (2012) further compared gender preferences for blog types and found that females
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were more likely than males to prefer blogs that were aesthetically attractive and emotionally expressive. From the above, it is clear that much attention has been focused on significant gender differences in preferences for the aesthetics of websites. What has not received sufficient attention is the gender differences in preferences for the usability of websites, which have not been explored or evaluated based on comprehensive and systematic approaches. It is also possible that aesthetics is linked to usability to the extent that websites can be used to achieve goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction (Di Blas et al., 2009; Chowdhury et al., 2014). As website functions become more complicated, users require access to natural and convenient user interfaces (Jung and Im, 2015), which is achieving a high level of usability. Usability includes also the concept of efficiency understood as the minimization of physical and mental effort using the interface (Gaspar et al., 2014; Ozok et al., 2014). In general, usability principles have been developed with consideration of the human information processing model (Lin et al., 1997). If website interfaces are designed based on usability principles, then users can navigate the websites enjoyably (Wang and Huang, 2015). Actually, past research into the gender influence on object choice showed that gender affects human behavior in terms of information processing (Weiser, 2000; Hsu, 2012). Males and females are known to process information differently, and this difference spills into various areas of information technology communications, such as websites (Simon, 2001; Sanchez-Franco, 2006). According the selectivity model proposed by Myers-Levy (1986), females are comprehensive processors, who are likely to absorb all available information before arriving at a conclusion, while males are selective processors, who count on specific and readily available information. This model, translated to a website navigating condition, implies that female users will be distracted by information that is not related to the goal and their efficiency of navigation thus reduced. The superfluous information that they gather is likely to exceed the capability of short-term memory (Lai et al., 2014). Therefore, Simon (2001) more specifically suggests that given the comprehensive information processing strategy preferred by women, females using a website may exhibit lower levels of favorable perception and satisfaction if the website fails to deliver gender-relevant information. In addition, gender differences in spatial visualization ability, a feature of information processing, have been reported in the previous literature for certain types of tasks (Mackintosh and Bennett, 2005; Kaufman, 2007). Spatial visualization is the ability to understand, manipulate, and interpret visual or spatial representations (Kozhevnikov and Thornton, 2006). Spatial visualization ability has frequently been linked to performance in navigation (Nilsson and Mayer, 2002; Downing et al., 2005), and is generally higher in male than in female computer users (Voyer et al., 1995; Cutmore et al., 2000). That is, it has been found that male users with high spatial visualization ability perform better and faster on information search tasks than female users with low spatial visualization ability skills in the context of website navigation. However, an interface could provide support for users with low spatial visualization ability to improve their navigation performance on a website. Zhang and Salvendy (2001) tried to reduce the overhead of a web navigation system by putting all of the links on a single interactive menu on all pages, and found that spatial visualization ability did not affect how many relevant pages a subject found in the new design interface of a website. To sum up, the usability principles for interface design are related to the human information processing model, but the models for males and females differ. That is to say, the differences in website interface design criteria ranked as important by male and female users might be explained in terms of information
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processing. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to explore the website interface design criteria for users of different genders based on usability principles. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The target population of this study was undergraduate and graduate students in the nine colleges and universities of Taoyuan County in Taiwan. A convenience sample of total of 300 participants were accessed and quantitative paper questionnaires adapted in Chinese from the Purdue Usability Testing Questionnaire were sent to the respondents. A total of 289 (96.3%) of the questionnaires were completed and returned. The number of valid questionnaires for data analysis was 236, including 113 (47.9%) males and 123 (52.1%) females. Among the participants, 116 (49.2%) majored in business administration, and 120 (50.8%) majored in system engineering; 132 (55.9%) had low frequency of Internet use (below 5 h a day), and 104 (44.1%) had high frequency of Internet use (more than 5 h a day); 130 (55.1%) were less than 20 years old, 63 (26.7%) were between 21 and 25, 27 (11.4%) were between 26 and 30, and 16 (6.8%) were older than 31 years old. 2.2. Measures The Purdue Usability Testing Questionnaire (PUTQ) was mainly developed to measure the usability of software systems, not simply user satisfaction (Lin et al., 1997). The eight principles (criteria) identified in the PUTQ are relevant to humanecomputer interaction task requirements and are supported by previous empirical studies. For instance, compatibility, the first principle of PUTQ, occurs whenever implicit or explicit spatial relationships exist among stimuli and responses (Lin et al., 1997). Many studies have successfully used the PUTQ to assess the usability of websites (e.g. Keevil, 1998; Harms et al., 2002; Zins et al., 2004) because the questionnaire offers an exhaustive list of usability issues for system interfaces (Yang et al., 2012). This study converted the PUTQ to a 6point Likert-type scale, to investigate the design criteria for website interfaces to which male and female users attached importance. To meet the purposes of the study, the items on the PUTQ were modified slightly; namely, question items were changed from interrogative sentences to declarative statements to assess the importance that the participants attached to various website interface design criteria. For example, I think that the results of command entry are compatible with user's expectations is important. Higher scores indicated greater importance for the design factor of the website interface. Detailed descriptions of each design factor follow below. (1) Compatibility: This refers to mental model compatibility, as well as to stimulus-response compatibility. If the operations of the systems are designed such that they are similar to users' daily activities, the compatibility is said to be high. Examples of items are, “The results of command entry are compatible with user's expectations”, “The control is matched to user skills”, and “The coding is compatible with familiar conventions”. (2) Consistency: If the interface is designed in a consistent manner, the user can familiarize him/herself with the interface more easily and know what to do in different circumstances. Examples of items are, “The coding is consistent across displays, menu options”, “The feedback is consistent”, and “The data display is consistent with user conventions”.
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(3) Flexibility: This refers to whether the interface can meet the needs of different users. Examples of items are, “The design for data entry is flexible”, “The display can be controlled by the user flexibly”, and “Users can assign command names”. (4) Learnability: This refers to how easily a novice can learn to use the interface, as well as how easily a current user can become familiar with the interface again after not using the system for a long time. Examples of items are, “The interface provides clarity of wording”, “The data is grouped reasonably for easy learning”, and “The ordering of menu options is logical”. (5) Minimal Action: If there are a lot of unnecessary actions, users might find the system tedious to use, and hence efficiency and satisfaction will be reduced. Examples of items are, “The required data will be entered only once”, “The interface provides function keys for frequent control entries”, and “The return to the general menu requires only one simple keystroke”. (6) Minimal Memory Load: As humans have capacity limits for working memory, an interface that requires users to remember many items to use it imposes a heavy memory load. Therefore, the interface should be designed with displays and coding systems that can be easily recalled. Examples of items are, “The interface provides hierarchic menus for sequential selection”, “Selected data are highlighted”, and “The interface provides supplementary verbal labels for icons”. (7) Perceptual Limitation: This is about whether the interface design is adapted to the properties of human perception, such as visual acuity, color contrast, etc. Examples of items are, “The number of spoken messages is limited”, “The color coding is redundant”, and “The interface provides visually distinctive data fields”. (8) User Guidance: This refers to whether enough user support is provided when the user needs it. Examples of items are, “The interface provides explicit entry of corrections”, “HELP is provided”, and “The interface provides UNDO to reverse control actions”. The questionnaire reliability was further evaluated with Cronbach's a coefficient. For compatibility, Cronbach's a was 0.77; for consistency, it was 0.76; for flexibility, 0.85; for learnability, 0.88; for minimal action, 0.85; for minimal memory load, 0.80; for perceptual limitation, 0.90; and for user guidance, 0.86. All coefficients for the scales were above the minimum acceptable value of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978; DeVellis, 1991; Gay, 1992). These findings indicate a consistent response to the questionnaire by the participants. Statistical analyses were performed following the verification of the validity and reliability of the questionnaire responses.
3. Results Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients for the overall sample (N ¼ 236). The findings indicated significantly positive relationships between all the design criteria. These results demonstrated that in general, the participants did not focus on only one specific design criterion. To explore the differences in gender preferences for website interface design criteria, the study conducted the analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the results are shown in Table 2. The results revealed that the importance of compatibility, consistency, learnability, minimal memory load, perceptual limitation, and user guidance did not differ significantly between female and male participants. However, there was a significantly difference in the importance of flexibility (F1, 234 ¼ 4.7, p < 0.01) between female and male participants. Female participants rated flexibility significantly lower (M ¼ 4.66) than did male participants (M ¼ 4.84). Also found was a significant difference in the importance of minimal action (F1, 234 ¼ 2.85, p < 0.05) to females and males. Females rated minimal action significantly lower (M ¼ 4.66) than did male participants (M ¼ 4.86). As shown in Table 2, the importance ratings of female participants were generally lower than those of male participants, although the difference between male and female participants was narrow. Further, this study coded the most important design criterion according to the highest mean value of design criteria for each participant. For example, the mean values of the design criteria of one individual were as follows: compatibility, 4.80; consistency, 4.40; flexibility, 6.0; learnability, 4.56; minimal action, 5.5; minimal memory load, 5.0; perceptual limitation, 4.60; and user guidance, 4.75. In this case, the most important design criterion for the participant was flexibility. The chi-square test of independence across gender for the most important design criterion was conducted to explore the differences in website interface design criteria for male and female users. The results are shown in Table 3 and Fig 1. Table 3 reveals a significant difference in gender across the most important website interface design criterion (c2 ¼ 49.97, p < 0.001). The three most important design criteria for males were compatibility (n ¼ 37, pct. ¼ 32.7%), minimal action (n ¼ 31,
Table 2 The means and ANOVA of gender on website interface design criteria. Variable
Gender
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
F
Male (mean)
Female (mean)
5.01 4.63 4.84 4.93 4.86 4.72 4.97 4.92
5.04 4.63 4.66 4.97 4.66 4.65 4.94 4.90
0.05 0.23 4.70** 0.26 2.85* 0.62 0.63 0.01
Note: *p < 0.05 **p < 0.01.
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations. Design factors
Mean
Std.
Compatibility
Consistency
Flexibility
Learnability
Minimal action
Minimal memory load
Perceptual limitation
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
5.01 4.61 4.76 4.94 4.77 4.68 4.95 4.91
0.63 0.63 0.61 0.56 0.70 0.61 0.57 0.56
0.42*** 0.26*** 0.41*** 0.21** 0.42*** 0.44*** 0.39***
0.32*** 0.50*** 0.43*** 0.34*** 0.40*** 0.47***
0.32*** 0.44*** 0.42*** 0.50*** 0.57***
0.51*** 0.36*** 0.62*** 0.51***
0.56*** 0.52*** 0.51***
0.66*** 0.56***
0.71***
Note: **p < 0.01 ***p < 0.001.
C.J. Lin, T.-L. Hsieh / International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 53 (2016) 306e311 Table 3 The Chi-square test results of genders and website interface design criteria. Variable
c2
Gender
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
Male
Female
37 5 13 8 31 7 5 7
29 9 11 26 2 9 15 22
49.97***
Note: ***p < 0.001.
40 Males
35
Females
30 25 Number of 20 Participant 15 10 5 0
Website Interface Design Criteria Fig. 1. The most important website interface design criteria for males and females.
pct. ¼ 27.4%), and flexibility (n ¼ 13, pct. ¼ 11.5%). In contrast, the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility (n ¼ 29, pct. ¼ 23.6%), learnability (n ¼ 26, pct. ¼ 21.1%), and user guidance (n ¼ 22, pct. ¼ 17.9%). 4. Discussion The development and spread of websites has been rapid; today, people can navigate websites to find new information, purchase goods, make appointments, and form communities of exchange. However, a gender gap still exists on the Internet, and it may be influenced by preferences for website interface design. Therefore, this study used statistical analysis to objectively explore the design criteria of website interfaces for users of different genders. The results indicated significant differences in the weights that male and female participants assign to the importance of several design criteria. 4.1. Website interface design criteria for males and females According to the analysis using the highest ranked criterion, the three most important design criteria for males included compatibility, minimal action, and flexibility; in contrast, the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility, learnability, and user guidance. Compatibility refers to stimulusresponse theory, which states that human responses are faster and more accurate for pairings of stimulus to response that correspond naturally than for those that do not (Fitts and Seeger, 1953; Vu and Proctor, 2003). Because stimulus-response theory is based on the features of human information processing (Hommel and
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Prinz, 1997), compatibility is an important criterion for website interfaces; in short, it is necessary to make a system look and function in ways that are compatible with user conventions and expectations, as demonstrated in previous studies (e.g., Scapin, 1990; Park and Hwan Lim, 1999). If the compatibility of a website interface is insufficient, the users may experience difficulty in anticipating the responses to their actions on the website. In other words, the users will be confused by the navigation paths for the website and will thus need to spend time recovering from improper operations. Accordingly, compatibility is an essential and fundamental design criterion for website interface. This could have been the reason why both male and female participants agreed that compatibility was the most important design criterion for website interfaces. The highest rank analysis showed that the second most important design criterion for male participants was minimal action, which means the operation of the interface is quite straightforward. Minimal Action enables a user to perform a minimal number of actions to complete a certain task, thereby increasing users’ efficiency and satisfaction (Lin et al., 1997; Zahabi et al., 2015). For instance, a website may use auto-complete and provide suggestions whenever users fill in a textbox. Another typical minimal action feature is a shortcut such as the “search bar” presented at the top of a web page. Shortcuts tend to be preferred by frequent users, who wish to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction (Shneiderman, 1987). It has been shown that female users tend to spend considerably more time gathering information when they navigate a website than male users, who pursue a minimizing approach whereby they get the desired information as quickly as possible (Cyr and Head, 2013). This difference seems to explain why the male participants scored minimal action second only to compatibility. On the other hand, the second most important design criterion for female participants was learnability, which means users can learn through several formats such as rote learning, learning through understanding, or learning by exploration (Lin et al., 1997; Joo et al., 2011). For a website, learnability is determined by consistency of navigation and layout (Yang et al., 2012). Users may need to spend more time to learn how to navigate a website with an inconsistent interface design due to bad conceptual model that designer provides for the user (Wang and Huang, 2015). Moreover, “knowledge in the world” is another determination for learnability because it can be easily retrieved when the users needed. In other words, when knowledge is present on the website interface in order to complete a task, the requirement to actually learn or recall how to use that object is diminished (Norman, 1988). Thus, a website interface with high learnability can assist users in developing navigation skills and prevent unintended errors in website navigation due to inconsistent or inadequate representations of the content. Spatial visualization ability has been found to affect the performance in navigation (Nilsson and Mayer, 2002; Downing et al., 2005), and is generally higher in male than in female computer users (Voyer et al., 1995; Cutmore et al., 2000). It seems possible that due to the high spatial navigation ability of the male, providing a learning assist and environment for them would not be as needed as in female users. Therefore, females tended to consider learnability as an important criterion for website use. According to the highest rank analysis, the third most important design criterion for male participants was flexibility, which means the interface allows tasks to be carried out in different ways to suit different situations or users (Maguire, 2001). In short, the interface may often speed up the interaction for expert users so that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users (Nielsen, 1993). For example, when users want to find hardware drivers on the official website of a computer company, they can
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choose to use either a “search bar” or a “drop down list” according to personal preferences. Another aspect of flexibility is personalization, meaning that users can customize the layout and function to enhance the efficiency of navigation according their diversified ski, 2012; Chinthakayala backgrounds (Kim, 2001; Jach and Kulin et al., 2013). On the whole, it is highly probable that male participants consider flexibility to be similar to minimal action, the second most important design criterion for male participants; that is, males tend to have a better sense of information technology. On the other hand, the third most important design criterion for female participants was user guidance, which resembles the conception of visibility; namely, the website might keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback, including error messages, within a reasonable time (Nielsen, 1993). In addition, further suggestions or confirmation, such as “RESTART” or “UNDO” after some specific operations on the website, also need to be provided, according to the user guidance scheme. Lin et al. (1997) noted that good user guidance will both improve the learnability of the website and decrease the mental workload of the users, since no extra effort will be needed for the users to perform the required tasks. The above points explain why female participants attach such importance to user guidance in website interface design. It must be noted that these implications about the differences between females and males in considering the importance of web site user interface design criteria are based on highest ranking data and additional measures should be included in future studies. 4.2. Limitations of the research All data were collected in Taiwan from a total of 236 participants. One positive feature of this investigation is the sufficiently large sample population, although the lack of diversity in the composition of the sample in terms of age and occupation should be noted. While some interesting differences were obtained based on the results, additional research in this area will ideally include an age range that represents external validity in the website interface design criteria for female users. The PUTQ, the main metric used in the study, has been reported to focus on conventional computer user interfaces that require a visual display, keyboard, and mouse. The usability measures considered in the PUTQ are limited to traditional dimensions of usability (Kim et al., 2012). However, the use of touchscreen devices such as tablet computers and smartphones has been growing exponentially since 2010. People navigate websites on touchscreen devices via natural user interfaces, which are different from the conventional computer user interface. Therefore, the results of this study cannot be applied directly to the design of natural user interfaces. It is suggested that in the future, studies explore the natural user interface design of touchscreen devices with attention to gender differences. 4.3. Implications Finally, the conclusions of this study may act as a useful reference for website designers who aim to design suitable interfaces for users of different genders. For instance, the interfaces of femaleoriented websites, such as the online registration system for an obstetrics and gynecology hospital, need to emphasize learnability and user guidance to enable the target users, females, to complete the registration effectively. In contrast, it is recommended that the interface of a male-oriented website, such as an Internet forum about vehicles, be designed based on flexibility and minimal action criteria so that males can find their desired topics efficiently. The current study has attempted to propose possible reasons behind the gender differences in evaluating the importance of user
interface design criteria. A thoughtful and well-planned web information architecture and user interface considering the different needs and emphases of the different gender would reduce the cost associated with the inefficiency of use and facilitate the performance of the user and enhance the affection of the interface. Acknowledgments This research was financially supported by Ministry of Science and Technology of the Taiwan, ROC under Grant NSC-97-2629-E033-001. References Bimber, B., 2000. Measuring the gender gap on the Internet. Soc. Sci. Quart. 81 (3), 868e876. Brosnan, M.J., Davidson, M.J., 1996. Psychological gender issues in computing. Gend. Work Organ 3 (1), 13e25. Chalmers, P.A., 2003. The role of cognitive theory in humanecomputer interface. Comput. Hum. Behav. 19 (5), 593e607. Chen, S.Y., Macredie, R.D., 2002. Cognitive styles and hypermedia navigation: development of a learning model. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 53 (1), 3e15. Chinthakayala, K.C., Zhao, C., Kong, J., Zhang, K., 2013. A comparative study of three social networking websites. World Wide Web 1e27. Chowdhury, A., Karmakar, S., Reddy, S.M., Ghosh, S., Chakrabarti, D., 2014. Usability is more valuable predictor than product personality for product choice in human-product physical interaction. Int. J. Ind. Ergon. 44 (5), 697e705. Colley, A.M., Gale, M.T., Harris, T.A., 1994. Effects of gender role identity and experience on computer attitude components. J. Educ. Comput. Res. 10 (2), 129e137. Cutmore, T.R., Hine, T.J., Maberly, K.J., Langford, N.M., Hawgood, G., 2000. Cognitive and gender factors influencing navigation in a virtual environment. Int. J. HumComput. Stud. 53 (2), 223e249. Cyr, D., Bonanni, C., 2005. Gender and website design in e-business. Int. J. Electron. Bus. 3, 565e582. Cyr, D., Head, M., 2013. Website design in an international context: the role of gender in masculine versus feminine oriented countries. Comput. Hum. Behav. 29 (4), 1358e1367. DeVellis, R.F., 1991. Scale Development: Theory and Application. Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Di Blas, N., Garzotto, F., Poggi, C., 2009. Web engineering at the frontier of the web 2.0: design patterns for online 3D shared spaces. World Wide Web 12 (4), 345e379. Dittmar, H., Long, K., Meek, R., 2004. Buying on the inter-net: gender difference in on-line and conventional buying motivations. Sex Roles 50, 423e444. Downing, R.E., Moore, J.L., Brown, S.W., 2005. The effects and interaction of spatial visualization and domain expertise on information seeking. Comput. Hum. Behav. 21 (2), 195e209. Fitts, P.M., Seeger, C.M., 1953. SR compatibility: spatial characteristics of stimulus and response codes. J. Exp. Psychol. 46 (3), 199e210. Gaspar, J., Fontul, M., Henriques, E., Silva, A., 2014. User satisfaction modeling framework for automotive audio interfaces. Int. J. Ind. Ergon. 44 (5), 662e674. Gay, L.R., 1992. Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application, fourth ed. Macmillan, New York. Harms, I., Schweibenz, W., Strobel, J., 2002. Usability evaluation von WebAngeboten mit dem Web usability index. In: Proceedings der, 24, pp. 283e292. Hommel, B.E., Prinz, W.E., 1997. Theoretical Issues in Stimulus-response Compatibility. North-Holland, Amsterdam. Hsu, C.C., 2012. Comparison of gender differences in young people's blog interface preferences and designs. Displays 33 (3), 119e128. Hsu, Y.C., 2006. Better educational website interface design: the implications from gender-specific preferences in graduate students. Brit. J. Educ. Technol. 37 (2), 233e242. Huang, W.H.D., Hood, D.W., Yoo, S.J., 2013. Gender divide and acceptance of collaborative Web 2.0 applications for learning in higher education. Internet High. Educ. 16, 57e65. ski, M., 2012. Heuristic Evaluation for e-commerce web pages usability Jach, K., Kulin assessment. Adv. Usability Eval. 460e471. Jackson, L.A., Ervin, K.S., Gardner, P.D., Schmitt, N., 2001. Gender and the internet: women communicating and men searching. Sex Roles 44, 363e379. Joo, S., Lin, S., Lu, K., 2011. A usability evaluation model for academic library websites: efficiency, effectiveness and learnability. J. Libr. Inf. Stud. 9 (2), 11e26. Jung, E.S., Im, Y., 2015. Touchable area: an empirical study on design approach considering perception size and touch input behavior. Int. J. Ind. Ergon. 49, 21e30. Kaufman, S.B., 2007. Sex differences in mental rotation and spatial visualization ability: can they be accounted for by differences in working memory capacity? Intell. 35 (3), 211e223. Keevil, B., 1998. Measuring the usability index of your web site. In: Proceedings ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), pp. 271e277.
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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ergon
Exploring the design criteria of website interfaces for gender Chiuhsiang Joe Lin, Tsung-Ling Hsieh* Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei 106, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 17 June 2015 Received in revised form 19 February 2016 Accepted 21 February 2016
The interface is the major channel through which users to navigate a website to find information matching their needs; nevertheless, gender-specific preferences for websites interface design have not been sufficiently explored or evaluated based on comprehensive and systematic approaches in past research. This study investigated the website interface design criteria for users of different genders based on usability principles. Undergraduate and graduate students in Taiwan were selected as the target sample. A total of 236 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The results showed significant gender differences in scaling of the importance of website interface design criteria. The three most important website interface design criteria for males were compatibility, minimal action, and flexibility, whereas the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility, learnability, and user guidance. This paper discusses the possible explanations for the gender differences and their implications for website design. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gender Website interfaces Usability
1. Introduction A review of the literature reveals that individual differences significantly affect personal learning in hypermedia systems such as websites (McIlroy et al., 2001; Chen and Macredie, 2002; Chalmers, 2003). Among the individual differences, gender may be perceived and accommodated most easily by website interface designers (Hsu, 2006). Early studies confirmed that females reported less computer self-efficacy and more anxiety when using a computer, which presumably lessens satisfaction with computer use, and by association, with enjoyment of online shopping (Colley et al., 1994; Brosnan and Davidson, 1996; Jackson et al., 2001). Therefore, it also has been assumed widely, and often validated empirically, that females and males differ in their attitudes toward, comfort with, and anxiety about Internet technology (Rozell and Gardner III, 2000; Shaw and Gant, 2002; Sanchez-Franco, 2006; Mitra et al., 2005; Tuch et al., 2010). Several researchers have suggested that females might have less competence and a less positive attitude toward using the Internet than males (Sherman et al., 2000). It has also been reported that females have much higher anxiety about using the Internet than males do (Ong and Lai, 2006; Huang et al., 2013). Further research found that males reported a more satisfying online shopping
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.-L. Hsieh). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2016.02.002 0169-8141/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
experience than females did (Simon, 2001; Dittmar et al., 2004; Cyr and Bonanni, 2005). Although the point has been made that the gender gap on the Internet is related to the frequency of web usedthat is, females tend to use the Internet less frequently and less intensely than males do (Bimber, 2000)dsome studies have demonstrated that the frequency of access to and participation on the Internet is almost equal in the two genders (Jackson et al., 2001; Mitra et al., 2005). In fact, females visit certain websites, such as travel websites, more often than males do (Kim et al., 2007). Therefore, the gender gap on the Internet needs to be investigated further if it is to be explained. It is possible that the gender gap on the Internet is caused by differences in preferences for specific aspects of website interface design; that is, if the website interfaces are not designed to suit females, then female visitors will experience frustration and anxiety while navigating the website and thus have lower satisfaction. Previous research has reported that males and females have different preferences for website design. In an investigative study, Cyr and Bonanni (2005) reported that males preferred websites with well-presented information, easy navigation, and meaningful website animations. Moss et al. (2006) found that the website design preferences of males included formal typography and images, visible horizontal lines, and mainly black or blue color schemes; the preferences of females, on the other hand, included informal typography and images, invisible horizontal lines, and mainly pink, mauve, or yellow color schemes. Hsu (2012) further compared gender preferences for blog types and found that females
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were more likely than males to prefer blogs that were aesthetically attractive and emotionally expressive. From the above, it is clear that much attention has been focused on significant gender differences in preferences for the aesthetics of websites. What has not received sufficient attention is the gender differences in preferences for the usability of websites, which have not been explored or evaluated based on comprehensive and systematic approaches. It is also possible that aesthetics is linked to usability to the extent that websites can be used to achieve goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction (Di Blas et al., 2009; Chowdhury et al., 2014). As website functions become more complicated, users require access to natural and convenient user interfaces (Jung and Im, 2015), which is achieving a high level of usability. Usability includes also the concept of efficiency understood as the minimization of physical and mental effort using the interface (Gaspar et al., 2014; Ozok et al., 2014). In general, usability principles have been developed with consideration of the human information processing model (Lin et al., 1997). If website interfaces are designed based on usability principles, then users can navigate the websites enjoyably (Wang and Huang, 2015). Actually, past research into the gender influence on object choice showed that gender affects human behavior in terms of information processing (Weiser, 2000; Hsu, 2012). Males and females are known to process information differently, and this difference spills into various areas of information technology communications, such as websites (Simon, 2001; Sanchez-Franco, 2006). According the selectivity model proposed by Myers-Levy (1986), females are comprehensive processors, who are likely to absorb all available information before arriving at a conclusion, while males are selective processors, who count on specific and readily available information. This model, translated to a website navigating condition, implies that female users will be distracted by information that is not related to the goal and their efficiency of navigation thus reduced. The superfluous information that they gather is likely to exceed the capability of short-term memory (Lai et al., 2014). Therefore, Simon (2001) more specifically suggests that given the comprehensive information processing strategy preferred by women, females using a website may exhibit lower levels of favorable perception and satisfaction if the website fails to deliver gender-relevant information. In addition, gender differences in spatial visualization ability, a feature of information processing, have been reported in the previous literature for certain types of tasks (Mackintosh and Bennett, 2005; Kaufman, 2007). Spatial visualization is the ability to understand, manipulate, and interpret visual or spatial representations (Kozhevnikov and Thornton, 2006). Spatial visualization ability has frequently been linked to performance in navigation (Nilsson and Mayer, 2002; Downing et al., 2005), and is generally higher in male than in female computer users (Voyer et al., 1995; Cutmore et al., 2000). That is, it has been found that male users with high spatial visualization ability perform better and faster on information search tasks than female users with low spatial visualization ability skills in the context of website navigation. However, an interface could provide support for users with low spatial visualization ability to improve their navigation performance on a website. Zhang and Salvendy (2001) tried to reduce the overhead of a web navigation system by putting all of the links on a single interactive menu on all pages, and found that spatial visualization ability did not affect how many relevant pages a subject found in the new design interface of a website. To sum up, the usability principles for interface design are related to the human information processing model, but the models for males and females differ. That is to say, the differences in website interface design criteria ranked as important by male and female users might be explained in terms of information
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processing. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to explore the website interface design criteria for users of different genders based on usability principles. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The target population of this study was undergraduate and graduate students in the nine colleges and universities of Taoyuan County in Taiwan. A convenience sample of total of 300 participants were accessed and quantitative paper questionnaires adapted in Chinese from the Purdue Usability Testing Questionnaire were sent to the respondents. A total of 289 (96.3%) of the questionnaires were completed and returned. The number of valid questionnaires for data analysis was 236, including 113 (47.9%) males and 123 (52.1%) females. Among the participants, 116 (49.2%) majored in business administration, and 120 (50.8%) majored in system engineering; 132 (55.9%) had low frequency of Internet use (below 5 h a day), and 104 (44.1%) had high frequency of Internet use (more than 5 h a day); 130 (55.1%) were less than 20 years old, 63 (26.7%) were between 21 and 25, 27 (11.4%) were between 26 and 30, and 16 (6.8%) were older than 31 years old. 2.2. Measures The Purdue Usability Testing Questionnaire (PUTQ) was mainly developed to measure the usability of software systems, not simply user satisfaction (Lin et al., 1997). The eight principles (criteria) identified in the PUTQ are relevant to humanecomputer interaction task requirements and are supported by previous empirical studies. For instance, compatibility, the first principle of PUTQ, occurs whenever implicit or explicit spatial relationships exist among stimuli and responses (Lin et al., 1997). Many studies have successfully used the PUTQ to assess the usability of websites (e.g. Keevil, 1998; Harms et al., 2002; Zins et al., 2004) because the questionnaire offers an exhaustive list of usability issues for system interfaces (Yang et al., 2012). This study converted the PUTQ to a 6point Likert-type scale, to investigate the design criteria for website interfaces to which male and female users attached importance. To meet the purposes of the study, the items on the PUTQ were modified slightly; namely, question items were changed from interrogative sentences to declarative statements to assess the importance that the participants attached to various website interface design criteria. For example, I think that the results of command entry are compatible with user's expectations is important. Higher scores indicated greater importance for the design factor of the website interface. Detailed descriptions of each design factor follow below. (1) Compatibility: This refers to mental model compatibility, as well as to stimulus-response compatibility. If the operations of the systems are designed such that they are similar to users' daily activities, the compatibility is said to be high. Examples of items are, “The results of command entry are compatible with user's expectations”, “The control is matched to user skills”, and “The coding is compatible with familiar conventions”. (2) Consistency: If the interface is designed in a consistent manner, the user can familiarize him/herself with the interface more easily and know what to do in different circumstances. Examples of items are, “The coding is consistent across displays, menu options”, “The feedback is consistent”, and “The data display is consistent with user conventions”.
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(3) Flexibility: This refers to whether the interface can meet the needs of different users. Examples of items are, “The design for data entry is flexible”, “The display can be controlled by the user flexibly”, and “Users can assign command names”. (4) Learnability: This refers to how easily a novice can learn to use the interface, as well as how easily a current user can become familiar with the interface again after not using the system for a long time. Examples of items are, “The interface provides clarity of wording”, “The data is grouped reasonably for easy learning”, and “The ordering of menu options is logical”. (5) Minimal Action: If there are a lot of unnecessary actions, users might find the system tedious to use, and hence efficiency and satisfaction will be reduced. Examples of items are, “The required data will be entered only once”, “The interface provides function keys for frequent control entries”, and “The return to the general menu requires only one simple keystroke”. (6) Minimal Memory Load: As humans have capacity limits for working memory, an interface that requires users to remember many items to use it imposes a heavy memory load. Therefore, the interface should be designed with displays and coding systems that can be easily recalled. Examples of items are, “The interface provides hierarchic menus for sequential selection”, “Selected data are highlighted”, and “The interface provides supplementary verbal labels for icons”. (7) Perceptual Limitation: This is about whether the interface design is adapted to the properties of human perception, such as visual acuity, color contrast, etc. Examples of items are, “The number of spoken messages is limited”, “The color coding is redundant”, and “The interface provides visually distinctive data fields”. (8) User Guidance: This refers to whether enough user support is provided when the user needs it. Examples of items are, “The interface provides explicit entry of corrections”, “HELP is provided”, and “The interface provides UNDO to reverse control actions”. The questionnaire reliability was further evaluated with Cronbach's a coefficient. For compatibility, Cronbach's a was 0.77; for consistency, it was 0.76; for flexibility, 0.85; for learnability, 0.88; for minimal action, 0.85; for minimal memory load, 0.80; for perceptual limitation, 0.90; and for user guidance, 0.86. All coefficients for the scales were above the minimum acceptable value of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978; DeVellis, 1991; Gay, 1992). These findings indicate a consistent response to the questionnaire by the participants. Statistical analyses were performed following the verification of the validity and reliability of the questionnaire responses.
3. Results Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients for the overall sample (N ¼ 236). The findings indicated significantly positive relationships between all the design criteria. These results demonstrated that in general, the participants did not focus on only one specific design criterion. To explore the differences in gender preferences for website interface design criteria, the study conducted the analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the results are shown in Table 2. The results revealed that the importance of compatibility, consistency, learnability, minimal memory load, perceptual limitation, and user guidance did not differ significantly between female and male participants. However, there was a significantly difference in the importance of flexibility (F1, 234 ¼ 4.7, p < 0.01) between female and male participants. Female participants rated flexibility significantly lower (M ¼ 4.66) than did male participants (M ¼ 4.84). Also found was a significant difference in the importance of minimal action (F1, 234 ¼ 2.85, p < 0.05) to females and males. Females rated minimal action significantly lower (M ¼ 4.66) than did male participants (M ¼ 4.86). As shown in Table 2, the importance ratings of female participants were generally lower than those of male participants, although the difference between male and female participants was narrow. Further, this study coded the most important design criterion according to the highest mean value of design criteria for each participant. For example, the mean values of the design criteria of one individual were as follows: compatibility, 4.80; consistency, 4.40; flexibility, 6.0; learnability, 4.56; minimal action, 5.5; minimal memory load, 5.0; perceptual limitation, 4.60; and user guidance, 4.75. In this case, the most important design criterion for the participant was flexibility. The chi-square test of independence across gender for the most important design criterion was conducted to explore the differences in website interface design criteria for male and female users. The results are shown in Table 3 and Fig 1. Table 3 reveals a significant difference in gender across the most important website interface design criterion (c2 ¼ 49.97, p < 0.001). The three most important design criteria for males were compatibility (n ¼ 37, pct. ¼ 32.7%), minimal action (n ¼ 31,
Table 2 The means and ANOVA of gender on website interface design criteria. Variable
Gender
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
F
Male (mean)
Female (mean)
5.01 4.63 4.84 4.93 4.86 4.72 4.97 4.92
5.04 4.63 4.66 4.97 4.66 4.65 4.94 4.90
0.05 0.23 4.70** 0.26 2.85* 0.62 0.63 0.01
Note: *p < 0.05 **p < 0.01.
Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations. Design factors
Mean
Std.
Compatibility
Consistency
Flexibility
Learnability
Minimal action
Minimal memory load
Perceptual limitation
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
5.01 4.61 4.76 4.94 4.77 4.68 4.95 4.91
0.63 0.63 0.61 0.56 0.70 0.61 0.57 0.56
0.42*** 0.26*** 0.41*** 0.21** 0.42*** 0.44*** 0.39***
0.32*** 0.50*** 0.43*** 0.34*** 0.40*** 0.47***
0.32*** 0.44*** 0.42*** 0.50*** 0.57***
0.51*** 0.36*** 0.62*** 0.51***
0.56*** 0.52*** 0.51***
0.66*** 0.56***
0.71***
Note: **p < 0.01 ***p < 0.001.
C.J. Lin, T.-L. Hsieh / International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 53 (2016) 306e311 Table 3 The Chi-square test results of genders and website interface design criteria. Variable
c2
Gender
Compatibility Consistency Flexibility Learnability Minimal action Minimal memory load Perceptual limitation User guidance
Male
Female
37 5 13 8 31 7 5 7
29 9 11 26 2 9 15 22
49.97***
Note: ***p < 0.001.
40 Males
35
Females
30 25 Number of 20 Participant 15 10 5 0
Website Interface Design Criteria Fig. 1. The most important website interface design criteria for males and females.
pct. ¼ 27.4%), and flexibility (n ¼ 13, pct. ¼ 11.5%). In contrast, the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility (n ¼ 29, pct. ¼ 23.6%), learnability (n ¼ 26, pct. ¼ 21.1%), and user guidance (n ¼ 22, pct. ¼ 17.9%). 4. Discussion The development and spread of websites has been rapid; today, people can navigate websites to find new information, purchase goods, make appointments, and form communities of exchange. However, a gender gap still exists on the Internet, and it may be influenced by preferences for website interface design. Therefore, this study used statistical analysis to objectively explore the design criteria of website interfaces for users of different genders. The results indicated significant differences in the weights that male and female participants assign to the importance of several design criteria. 4.1. Website interface design criteria for males and females According to the analysis using the highest ranked criterion, the three most important design criteria for males included compatibility, minimal action, and flexibility; in contrast, the three most important design criteria for females were compatibility, learnability, and user guidance. Compatibility refers to stimulusresponse theory, which states that human responses are faster and more accurate for pairings of stimulus to response that correspond naturally than for those that do not (Fitts and Seeger, 1953; Vu and Proctor, 2003). Because stimulus-response theory is based on the features of human information processing (Hommel and
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Prinz, 1997), compatibility is an important criterion for website interfaces; in short, it is necessary to make a system look and function in ways that are compatible with user conventions and expectations, as demonstrated in previous studies (e.g., Scapin, 1990; Park and Hwan Lim, 1999). If the compatibility of a website interface is insufficient, the users may experience difficulty in anticipating the responses to their actions on the website. In other words, the users will be confused by the navigation paths for the website and will thus need to spend time recovering from improper operations. Accordingly, compatibility is an essential and fundamental design criterion for website interface. This could have been the reason why both male and female participants agreed that compatibility was the most important design criterion for website interfaces. The highest rank analysis showed that the second most important design criterion for male participants was minimal action, which means the operation of the interface is quite straightforward. Minimal Action enables a user to perform a minimal number of actions to complete a certain task, thereby increasing users’ efficiency and satisfaction (Lin et al., 1997; Zahabi et al., 2015). For instance, a website may use auto-complete and provide suggestions whenever users fill in a textbox. Another typical minimal action feature is a shortcut such as the “search bar” presented at the top of a web page. Shortcuts tend to be preferred by frequent users, who wish to reduce the number of interactions and to increase the pace of interaction (Shneiderman, 1987). It has been shown that female users tend to spend considerably more time gathering information when they navigate a website than male users, who pursue a minimizing approach whereby they get the desired information as quickly as possible (Cyr and Head, 2013). This difference seems to explain why the male participants scored minimal action second only to compatibility. On the other hand, the second most important design criterion for female participants was learnability, which means users can learn through several formats such as rote learning, learning through understanding, or learning by exploration (Lin et al., 1997; Joo et al., 2011). For a website, learnability is determined by consistency of navigation and layout (Yang et al., 2012). Users may need to spend more time to learn how to navigate a website with an inconsistent interface design due to bad conceptual model that designer provides for the user (Wang and Huang, 2015). Moreover, “knowledge in the world” is another determination for learnability because it can be easily retrieved when the users needed. In other words, when knowledge is present on the website interface in order to complete a task, the requirement to actually learn or recall how to use that object is diminished (Norman, 1988). Thus, a website interface with high learnability can assist users in developing navigation skills and prevent unintended errors in website navigation due to inconsistent or inadequate representations of the content. Spatial visualization ability has been found to affect the performance in navigation (Nilsson and Mayer, 2002; Downing et al., 2005), and is generally higher in male than in female computer users (Voyer et al., 1995; Cutmore et al., 2000). It seems possible that due to the high spatial navigation ability of the male, providing a learning assist and environment for them would not be as needed as in female users. Therefore, females tended to consider learnability as an important criterion for website use. According to the highest rank analysis, the third most important design criterion for male participants was flexibility, which means the interface allows tasks to be carried out in different ways to suit different situations or users (Maguire, 2001). In short, the interface may often speed up the interaction for expert users so that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users (Nielsen, 1993). For example, when users want to find hardware drivers on the official website of a computer company, they can
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choose to use either a “search bar” or a “drop down list” according to personal preferences. Another aspect of flexibility is personalization, meaning that users can customize the layout and function to enhance the efficiency of navigation according their diversified ski, 2012; Chinthakayala backgrounds (Kim, 2001; Jach and Kulin et al., 2013). On the whole, it is highly probable that male participants consider flexibility to be similar to minimal action, the second most important design criterion for male participants; that is, males tend to have a better sense of information technology. On the other hand, the third most important design criterion for female participants was user guidance, which resembles the conception of visibility; namely, the website might keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback, including error messages, within a reasonable time (Nielsen, 1993). In addition, further suggestions or confirmation, such as “RESTART” or “UNDO” after some specific operations on the website, also need to be provided, according to the user guidance scheme. Lin et al. (1997) noted that good user guidance will both improve the learnability of the website and decrease the mental workload of the users, since no extra effort will be needed for the users to perform the required tasks. The above points explain why female participants attach such importance to user guidance in website interface design. It must be noted that these implications about the differences between females and males in considering the importance of web site user interface design criteria are based on highest ranking data and additional measures should be included in future studies. 4.2. Limitations of the research All data were collected in Taiwan from a total of 236 participants. One positive feature of this investigation is the sufficiently large sample population, although the lack of diversity in the composition of the sample in terms of age and occupation should be noted. While some interesting differences were obtained based on the results, additional research in this area will ideally include an age range that represents external validity in the website interface design criteria for female users. The PUTQ, the main metric used in the study, has been reported to focus on conventional computer user interfaces that require a visual display, keyboard, and mouse. The usability measures considered in the PUTQ are limited to traditional dimensions of usability (Kim et al., 2012). However, the use of touchscreen devices such as tablet computers and smartphones has been growing exponentially since 2010. People navigate websites on touchscreen devices via natural user interfaces, which are different from the conventional computer user interface. Therefore, the results of this study cannot be applied directly to the design of natural user interfaces. It is suggested that in the future, studies explore the natural user interface design of touchscreen devices with attention to gender differences. 4.3. Implications Finally, the conclusions of this study may act as a useful reference for website designers who aim to design suitable interfaces for users of different genders. For instance, the interfaces of femaleoriented websites, such as the online registration system for an obstetrics and gynecology hospital, need to emphasize learnability and user guidance to enable the target users, females, to complete the registration effectively. In contrast, it is recommended that the interface of a male-oriented website, such as an Internet forum about vehicles, be designed based on flexibility and minimal action criteria so that males can find their desired topics efficiently. The current study has attempted to propose possible reasons behind the gender differences in evaluating the importance of user
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