以色彩作為應用程式管理策略之探討

Abstract

與應用程式有關的研究已成為智慧型手機介面研究的新興議題，隨著現代人所使用的應用程式越來越多，如何在有限的智慧型手機介面上進行最佳化的呈現與成了一個急需探討的問題。本研究以三個實驗探討顏色在應用程式管理上所扮演的角色，實驗I的眼動實驗發現圖示的顏色為使用者辨認應用程式的重要依據之一。

實驗II以電腦模擬手機介面，並在以顏色編碼管理應用程式的條件下要求使用者進行搜尋任務，結果顯示以顏色進行分類的介面會帶來較快的搜尋速度與較低的頁面回翻率，然而同時產生較高的錯誤率。並且以顏色分類會使得使用者在觀看目標圖示階段花較久時間，對於圖示熟悉與否也反映在觀看時間，而非搜尋速度上，顯示出使用者的搜尋策略。

最後，實驗III進一步探討顏色對於使用者對圖示的空間記憶之影響，實驗任務為要求使用者快速地進行搜尋任務，然而實驗者的真正意圖是分析使用者在同質/異質色彩頁面上的學習效果差異，結果顯示單一顏色頁面的位置學習較為困難，而混雜顏色頁面的非目標圖示實際上提供給使用者空間情境脈絡，而非全然的干擾。

User experiences with applications(apps) have become one of the hottest topics in smartphone interface research. With the increasing number of apps for users, how to manage the booming applications on a space-limited screen has become an issue in Human Computer Interaction(HCI) field. The present study aims to explore the potential roles of colors in application management on a space-limited interface. Three experiments were carried out to probe the function of color in visual search and position learning that are closely related to icon management. Experiment I used eye scan to uncover the users’ strategies for searching for a given icon. The pattern of the eye tracking data shows that users rely heavily on colors while searching for app icons.

In Experiment II the participants were asked to perform an icon search task over a few screen pages on a computer-simulated smartphone interface. In the homogeneous condition, all icons were grouped by colors and icons on the same page were all of similar colors. In the heterogeneous condition, there was no apparent rule for grouping icons on the same page. The results show that the search time was shorter, the occurrence rate of returning to previous pages was lower, but the error rate was higher for the homogeneous condition. The participant spent more time on inspecting the target icon before setting out a search in the homogeneous condition. The degree of familiarity to icons only affects this inspecting time, but not the search speed. Putting all together, our results suggest that grouping by color affects the participant’s strategy for visual search.

The task of Experiment III was similar to that in Experiment II except that the layout of the screen page remained constant over icon search trials. The search time drops with trials as the participant builds up a spatial memory of icon positions. The purpose was to compare the learning curves of homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions. We found that the participant performed better in the heterogeneous condition. It is possible that distractors of assorted colors might form a patterned gestalt that serves as an enriched context and , in turn, aids in spatial learning.