This study explored the effect of scroll bar and navigation menu co-location on web performance. Participants interacted with fictitious web sites that co-located the menu and scroll bar, or placed them opposite one another. We did not find support for the hypothesis that menu and scroll bar co-location would result in improved menu navigation performance. However, participants indicated a preference for co-location and found it easier and faster to use than non-co-location. The results show a strong advantage for the conventional right-side placement of the scroll bar and a potential benefit for the unconventional right-side placement of the menu.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ByrneM. D.JohnB. E.WehrleN. S.CrowD. C. (1999). “The tangled Web we wove: A taskonomy of WWW use.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pp. 544–551.
2.
FittsP. M. (1954). The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling Amplitude and Movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 381–391.
3.
FittsP. M.PetersonJ. (1964). Informational Capacity of Discrete Motor Responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 103–112.
4.
KalbachJ.BosenickT. (2003) “Web Page Layout: A Comparison Between Left- and Right-justified Site Navigation Menus.” Journal of Digital Information, 4. [Online] http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v04/i01/Kalbach/.
KellenerE.BarnesG.M.LingardR. (2001). Effects of Scroll Bar Orientation and Item Justification when using List Boxes. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 45 Annual Meeting, pp. 662–666.
7.
KimJ.LeeJ. (2002. “Critical design factors for successful e-commerce systems.” Behaviour and Information Technology, 21(3): 185–199.
8.
KingsburgJ.AndreA. D. (2004). “A Comparison of Three-Level Web Menu Navigation Structures.” Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting, pp. 1513–1517.
9.
LohseG. L.SpillerP. (1998). “Quantifying the effect of user interface design features on cyberstore traffic and sales.” Proceedings of the S1GCH11 conference on Human factors in computing systems, 211–218.
SpoolJ.M.ScanlonT.SchroederW.SnyderCDeAngeoT. (1999). Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: San Francisco.
15.
TilsonR.DongJ.MartinS.KiekeE. (1998). “Factors and Principles Affecting the Usability of Four E-commerce Sites.” Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Human Factors and the Web. [Online] http://www.research.microsoft.com/users/marycz/hfweb98/tilson/.
16.
WickensCD.CarswellCM. (1995). The proximity compatibility principle: Its psychological foundation and relevance to display design. Human Factors, 37 (3), 473–494.
17.
WickensC. D.HollandsJ.G. (2000). Engineering Psychology and Human Performance(3' ed.). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
