Abstract
This paper reports the results of a study that examined the impact of aesthetic changes to a web site on user performance when a single critical link in the main navigation of the page also changed. 102 participants performed 4 search tasks on a web site. They were then redirected back to the site immediately or waited approximately 14 days to perform the first search task again. Half the participants had the critical navigation link on the first set of tasks, while the other half did not. On their second visit, the presence or absence of the link was either consistent, or was the opposite of what they had encountered on their first visit. In all cases, participants saw a web site with one aesthetic look on their first visit, and this aesthetic was changed for their second visit. Results showed that, while users generally noticed changes to the site after an aesthetic change, they were not particularly good at determining exactly what changed. Further, their ability detect and describe these differences decreased as the time between recurrent visits increased, and for the most part, the changes did not adversely impact objective performance measures.
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