Flight ticket booking engines on airline and online travel agency websites use two different designs to present roundtrip flight search results: some websites display outbound and return flights on a single page, while others show them on two consecutive pages. In our pilot experiment with 23 users we compared these two design options on a model flight booking website. Usability metrics like speed of performance and error rate were accompanied by eye-tracking and mouse-tracking indicators of cognitive load. The experiment produced mixed results: two-page design outperformed simultaneous presentation of outbound and inbound flights in terms of performance speed, but it also caused almost three times higher error rate and incurred a higher cognitive load compared to one-page design. Further research, with more users representing different age groups, different levels of task complexity, and analysis of users' subjective preferences, is necessary.
In this paper we describe the results of an experimental study of a complex web search. Participants completed a two-stage search task: they were asked to find plane tickets with given parameters. The influence of two factors was considered: (1) web page design and (2) task complexity. We analysed the speed of the search, parameters of eye movements and mouse pointer movements during the search task. The results demonstrated the influence of both factors. Higher task complexity (linked to the higher working memory load) was associated with an increase in the average search time, and also with an increase in the average fixation duration and blink frequency. The organisation of information on web pages determined the strategy used to accomplish the search task. The one-page design resulted in an insignificant increase in search time, and in the use of perceptual search strategies. The two-page design resulted in the use of faster, but more resource demanding cognitive strategies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.