Searching for information on the Web: Role of aging and ergonomic quality of website
CHEVALIER ; DOMMES ; MARTINS ; VALERIAN
Type de document
ARTICLE A COMITE DE LECTURE NON REPERTORIE DANS BDI (ACLN)
Langue
anglais
Auteur
CHEVALIER ; DOMMES ; MARTINS ; VALERIAN
Résumé / Abstract
Despite rapid growth in the number of websites, there is still a significant number of ergonomic problems, which hinder cognitive activities of web users. As cognitive aging is generally associated with a decrease of working memory capacities, an inhibition failure and a slowing of the speed of processing, we argue that aging may have negative effects on information search activities, especially when the website incorporates ergonomic problems. In the present experimental study, we compare younger and older web users performances while searching for information in two websites: one that fits the ergonomic recommendations and another with ergonomic problems. The results show that aging had negative consequences on users' activities of information search (more times to find information, more number of steps required to find information and more cognitive resources involved in the activity). These consequences are more important for the non-ergonomic web site than for the ergonomic site.
Source
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, num. 4550, 691-700 p.
Editeur
Springer
