Influence of Visual Salience on Webpage Product Searches
Jeremiah D. Still, Mary Lynn Still · ACM Transactions on Applied Perception · 2019
Visual salience can increase search efficiency in complex displays but does that influence persist when completing a specific search? In two experiments, participants were asked to search webpages for the prices of specific products. Those products were located near an area of high visual salience or low visual salience. In Experiment 1, participants were read the name of the product before searching; in Experiment 2, participants were shown an image of the exact product before searching. In both cases, participants completed their search more quickly in the high-salience condition. This was true even when there was no ambiguity about the visual characteristics of the product. Our findings suggest that salience guides users through complex displays under realistic, goal-driven task conditions. Designers can use this knowledge to create interfaces that are easier to search by aligning salience and task-critical elements.