Betriebswirtschaftliche Software muss heute auf verschiedenen Geräteklassen laufen; Layouts werden mit Responsive Design an verschiedene Bildschirmgrößen angepasst. Dabei erwarten Benutzer eine gewisse Konsistenz zwischen Desktop und Mobilgerät. Die bei Mobilgeräten gängige Position der Anwendungstoolbar am Fuß des Bildschirms erweist sich dabei auf großen Monitoren als problematisch. In einer unmoderierten Online-Studie untersuchten wir drei verschiedene Designvarianten einer Anwendungstoolbar im Hinblick auf Fehlerhäufigkeit, zeitliche Effizienz, Benutzerpräferenz und – Zufriedenheit auf Desktop-Bildschirmen. Der Beitrag stellt das Studiendesign, ausgewählte Ergebnisse sowie Erfahrungen mit der Testplattform Userzoom vor.

Adding functionality to a computer user interface frequently results in adding more visual features to the screen. The question of when, exactly, a screen becomes too crowded is often answered arbitrarily, or via expensive usability testing. The present study investigates an algorithm presented by Rosenholtz et al. to calculate “Feature Congestion” as a measure of visual clutter on the screen, and whether or not it can accurately predict users' experiencing a screen as being cluttered (2005, 2007a). Screenshots of websites which were equidistant in Feature Congestion were subject to a psychophysical paired comparison scaling experiment with 29 participants. Results from the experiment indicate that the Feature Congestion model can accurately predict perceptions of visual clutter on a computer user interface. Practical implications of the present findings are also discussed.

In the present paper, we report two experiments out of series of studies designed to examine various aspects of visual search for icons of differing spatial frequencies. Specifically, the present experiments explore whether there exists a search asymmetry between high and low spatial frequency icons (A amongst B > B amongst A), and whether observers can limit their search to the relevant set of items in a display containing both types of icons. Our results show that a classic search asymmetry does not exist for spatial frequency; that, rather, both types of targets ‘pop out’; that search for a high spatial frequency target amongst high spatial frequency distractors is less efficient than search for a low spatial frequency target amongst low spatial frequency distractors; and that observers are partially able to limit their search to the relevant subset in mixed displays. Implications for the design of touch screen user interfaces are discussed.