The Role of Structure and Content in Perception of Visual Similarity Between Web Pages

Abstract

In human–computer interaction, users' perception of visual similarity in interfaces may affect how well they judge the relevance of information, construct appropriate mental models, and effectively interact with computers. This is of interest to both computer science and psychology. A review of the theoretical and applied research in visual similarity reveals both a content-oriented and a structural-oriented approach. The present study seeks to understand the content and structural aspects of visual similarity judgment. Unlike early theoretical studies in psychology, web pages were used as realistic stimulus in an experimental study. Structural and content changes to pairs of web pages were incrementally applied in experimental sessions while participants were judging the similarity of these pairs. The results of the experiment indicated that similarity ratings between two pages correlate negatively with the number of alterations made to the layout of one of the pages. Similarity ratings between two pages also declined when distinctive background colors were applied to one of the pages. The experiment also revealed that text-complete web pages received lower similarity ratings than wire frames of the pages. Pages with readable text received higher similarity ratings than pages with unreadable text. The results of this study will help web designers produce web pages of various similarities that will be consistent with users' judgment and help improve similarity-based web researches.