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Eye Tracking: Facebook and LinkedIn Usability

Posted on Feb 19, 2010 | 0 comments

Eye Tracking: Facebook and LinkedIn Usability Nowadays connectivity is undeniably convenient, as the Internet has provided a platform for us to use social networking sites to stay in touch, make friends, meet clients, and enlarge our circle. Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook provide business and peer networks that organically grow and expand, providing an endless field of potential friends and clients. But despite the convenience of the friend and contact lists that are part of Web 2.0 culture, it seems the design element of these lists remains inconsistent, varying from site to site as you might expect.

Another recent study using eye tracking has attempted to evaluate which design is better when it comes to expanding your network with ease. The Catalyst Group was behind the study that compared two popular friends and networking sites to determine if one was more clearly effective than the other when it comes to identifying new contacts.

Researchers created two testing prototypes based on Facebook and LinkedIn; the content of each prototype displayed identical names and descriptions, though keeping to form, the Facebook-inspired design had photos of contacts and a 1-column layout. The LinkedIn prototype had a 3-column layout.

Thirteen participants were involved in the study, each of which were members of at least one social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. Six were LinkedIn users prior. The volunteers participated in two tasks: a name recognition task, where they were to scan from a list of names to find the names of US presidents and count the number they found, and a title/description recognition task, where participants were asked to find a “design professional” to assist them with a hypothetical project.

The thirteen were equipped with eye trackers as they scanned through the single- and multi-column lists, searching for the elements they were asked to. Using gaze plots and aggregate heatmaps to display gaze fixation among the viewers, the researchers found the single-column, i.e. the Facebook prototype, to be more effective. Participants thought the 3-column design was “cumbersome and overwhelming,” and after the study, had doubts that they had managed to see all the names present.

Eye tracking showed that when viewing the LinkedIn-inspired 3-column list, viewers did not adopt a consistent scanning strategy across the page. They thought the single column layout to be more effective and enjoyable because a single column of names was easier to read straight down during the name recognition task. Users were able to “ignore” the adjacent column, which contained irrelevant information to the current task. All the participants scanned the single column layout the same way – top to bottom – and there was very little hesitation or exploration at the beginning of the task, which wasn’t the case during the 3-column tests.

For more details on the study and to see the aggregate heat maps and eye tracking patterns, take a look here:

Seeing Friends: An Eye Tracking and Usability Study of Social Website “Friends Lists”

Eye Tracking: Facebook and LinkedIn Usability

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