During my Erasmus exchange program at Stockholm University, my colleagues and I conducted a study on the effect of web design on user attention and information retention. This study was conducted as part of the Cognitive Psychology in Human-Computer Interaction course. Our findings show how eye tracking technology provides valuable insights into user behavior and web design optimization.
The final_report.pdf file is the paper of the study while the research_presentation.pdf contains a brief presentation, summarizing the study. The KPiMDI_2023_exam English.pdf file contains the answers to the exam I gave for the course, writing to critical reviews of the research paper.
Abstract
Advertisements can be found all over the web, often accompanying articles and other texts that we consume on a daily basis. Debates around how technology affects us negatively, including internet marketing, are also nothing new. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between a subject’s level of distraction by web ads while consuming text, and their ability to retain the information presented in the text in their short-term memory. This is done through the lens of cognitive psychology, using the knowledge that the field has to present as ground work to develop the research questions and present four hypotheses. The study employed an experiment where a group of subjects was to read a text while distracted by ads, while a second group acting as a control group was to read only the text. Both groups were then immediately tested on their ability to remember what they had just read. The study finds that there may be evidence to show that ads could influence the users’ attention, but not necessarily distract them fully, although the evidence is - for multiple reasons - far from conclusive. Furthermore, the study does find that ads presented on the same page as a text in fact does seem to affect our short-term memory and our ability to remember the information directly following reading it.