The main objective of this paper was to investigate the effects of a computer screen interface design and its related geometrical characteristics of 36 graphical objects on a user's task efficiency. A total of 490 subjects took part in laboratory experiments that focused on the direct manipulation of a visual dialogue between a user and a computer. The subjects were asked to select an object from among a group of items randomly placed on the computer screen that were visible exclusively during the visual search process. A model expressing the mean object acquisition time as a function of graphical object size and the configuration was developed and statistically validated. The model showed an influence of geometrical design characteristics of the graphical objects (icons) and their groupings (icon structures) on the observed task efficiency. The reported results can be used at those stages of a software lifecycle that concentrate on prototyping, designing, and implementing graphical solutions for the efficient graphical user-computer interface.

The main goal of this research was the analysis of persons' attitudes towards digital graphical information regarding various types of smartphone's virtual package designs. Sixty students from two different faculties were involved in the study. Both the faculty and gender effects were controlled. The packages were electronically presented to the subjects on the computer screen. A binary pairwise procedure within the framework of the conjoint analysis was employed to assess the examinees' preferences. The experimental stimuli differed in the brand name location in relation to the product image (left and right hand side), background colors used (grey and pink), and the typography applied to the brand name (big and compact text versus small with the increased interletter spacing). The main results showed significant effects of brand name location and typography along with significant interactions concerned with the background package color. Generally, males preferred grey variants while females -pink. These results analyzed along with the conjoint analysis outcomes surprisingly show that the background color was the main factor influencing males' preferences while for women it was the least important issue. The cluster analysis results demonstrated significant interpersonal discrepancies and identified three, similar in number, groups sharing common preference structures.

This study investigated usability of graphical icons in the design of human-computer interfaces. A simple additive model of icon acquisition time, including terms for Index of Difficulty, mode of icon array, and log 2 (number of icons) explained 95% of the variance in mean times covering all 36 conditions over 4 laboratory experiments conducted in the study. The acquisition of icons in graphical menus was subject to Fitts' Law. Where the dialog box only appeared on the screen when an action was initiated, the acquisition time included a choice time that was additive with the movement time. When a choice was required during the task in addition to a movement, both the number of icons and their configuration affected the choice time. Design implications are that the number of icons should be minimized in pop-up menus and that the icons should be arranged in a manner reflective of the shape of the useful field of view. Frequently used menus or icon arrays should be permanently visible to minimize performance time (e.g., by using task bars to hold common icons). Dialogue windows, especially with a larger number of icons, should be built in compact, perhaps square, configurations. If it is not possible to use the square icon configuration, it is desirable to use the horizontal configuration, which can be utilized more efficiently than the vertical configuration

This article is concerned with various ways of analyzing the subjective assessment of displaying digital signage content. In the beginning, the brief description of the signage system evolution is described; next, the carried out experiment is depicted. The preferences of the 32 subjects were obtained using pairwise comparisons of the designed screen formats. Then the priorities were derived by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process framework. The gathered data were modeled and analyzed by means of the analysis of variance, multiple regression, and conjoint and factor analyses. The results suggest that the application of different methods of preference analysis may provide additional information that could facilitate more in-depth understanding of the given preference structure. C 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

In this paper, results of experimental research on the preattentive mechanism in the humancomputer interaction (HCI) were presented. Fifty four subjects were asked to find interface elements from various panel structures. The arrangements were differentiated by their orientation (vertical, horizontal), colour pattern (ordered, unordered) and object background colours (green-blue, green-red, blue-red). The main finding of the study generally confirms the profits provided by the visual preattentive processing of the colour feature in graphical panel operation efficiency. However, the vertical way of arranging the items in search layouts resulted in decreasing the preattentive effect related to the item background colour. In regular, chessboard-like patterns of different coloured items, the effect of the early vision was less salient than in the case of structures with randomly dispersed colours. The reported results can help in designing efficient graphical user-computer interfaces in many interactive information systems.