Screen captures to support switching attention

Author

Gellevij, Mark ; Van Der Meij, Hans

Author_Institution

Dept. of Instructional Technol., Twente Univ., Enschede, Netherlands

Volume

45

Issue

2

fYear

2002

fDate

6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

115

Lastpage

122

Abstract

The study set out to validate the supportive role of screen captures for switching attention. Forty-two participants learned how to work with Microsoft Excel with a paper manual. There were three types of manuals: a textual manual, a visual manual with full-screen captures, and a visual manual with a mixture of partial- and full-screen captures. The findings show that participants in all conditions looked up from the manual to the screen on about 97% of the cases in which such a switch was called for rank order analyses showed that users of the visual manuals switched attention significantly more often than did users of the textual manual. No differences were found between conditions on learning effects and training time

Keywords

human factors; professional communication; spreadsheet programs; training; user interfaces; user manuals; Microsoft Excel; attention switching; full-screen captures; learning effects; paper manual; partial captures; rank order analyses; screen captures; textual manual; training time; visual manual; Communication switching; Computer graphics; Density estimation robust algorithm; Educational technology; Frequency; Manuals; Spreadsheet programs; Switches; Usability; Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0361-1434

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPC.2002.1003694

Filename

1003694