The Effect of Information Overhead on Perceived Workload and Learning

Abstract

E-commerce sites today contain variety product information to inform shoppers about a company's products offerings. Although the number of attributes used to describe products depends on the product being described, attributes can be in the hundreds. One of the key business challenges is to maintain the ever increasing product information up-to-date. It is important that data management tools used for these tasks are efficient and easy to use. The present study describes the effect of information overhead on perceived workload. Participants were asked to create 20 different products using four different web prototypes that varied in content density and customization capability. Mean time on task over 20 trials was fit using a power function and perceived workload was collected using NASA Task Load Index. The results obtained indicate that unused information does increase perceived workload and negatively affect performance. Also, that UI customization can help reduce perceived workload and allow users to reach peak performance faster. Finally, participants performed faster and with higher satisfaction under the customization conditions.