Comparing user cognitive style and performance with text user interfaces and image user interfaces

This paper reports on an experiment that examines the effect of presenting a range of tasks using text and image interfaces to subjects with different cognitive styles as defined in the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) package. The experiment was conducted as part of the Telecare Companion project and follows up another experiment previously reported. The experiment using text and images formed part of a wider experiment that included other media including audio and video. There were two questions that the text and image experiment was expected to answer. (1) For both media, which tasks do subjects perform better than the others. The answer to this question would establish which type of task are suited for which media. (2) What effect does cognitive style have on the performance of subjects. The answer to this question would determine whether it is appropriate for multimedia computer systems to adapt the interface to suit the cognitive style of users