An eye-tracking study on the effect of infographic structures on viewer’s comprehension and cognitive load

Abstract

The basic premise of this research is investigating the effect of layout on the comprehension and cognitive load of the viewers in the information graphics. The term ‘Layout’ refers to the arrangement and organization of the visual and textual elements in a graphical design. The experiment conducted in this study is designed based on two stories and each one of these stories is presented with two different layouts. During the experiment, eye-tracking devices are applied to collect the gaze data including the eye movement data and pupil diameter fluctuation. In the research on the modification of the layouts, contents of each story are narrated using identical visual and textual elements. The analysis of eye-tracking data provides quantitative evidence concerning the change of layout in each story and its effect on the comprehension of participants and variation of their cognitive load. In conclusion, it can be claimed that the comprehension from the zigzag form of the layout was higher with a less imposed cognitive load.

Storylines for practice: a visual storytelling approach to strengthen the science-practice interface

“…During our focus groups, participants scrolled throughout the storylines to identify the parts that they were interested in most and would not necessarily navigate the content in a linear way. Similar to the findings of Majooni et al (2018), revisiting different storyline parts can be either interpreted as difficulty in understanding or the process of making a connection between the previous and current storyline parts.…”

“…The choice in the effectiveness evaluation depends on the specific goal and available resources (Hung and Parsons 2018). For example, Majooni et al (2018) assessed the effects of infographic structure on ease of understanding using eye-tracking methods. Another purpose could be to evaluate the retention of content among university students using a quiz and self-reported ratings (Cope et al 2018).…”

Communicating the complexity of children’s needs and aspirations to the designers of info-graphics

“…Similarly, as the undergraduate students found much of the qualitative data overwhelming, infographics such as this one may also have been used to help them grasp a better understanding of the children involved in the project. Infographics can be a highly efficient and effective way to convey large amounts of information in a visual manner (Majoon et al, 2017) [46]. However, striking the balance between making data accessible and manageable, whilst avoiding diluting the rich information collated or stereotyping is a potential challenge for infographic designers.…”

Perspectives

“…The authors (Majooni et al, 2018) used eye gaze tracking equipment in a way that is similar to the method used to monitor how users look at web pages. Two different layouts were used for two different stories and readers were asked questions to judge how well they understood the story as soon as they had an opportunity to look at it.…”