As China embraces the Information technology era, it is important to understand how Chinese users interact with Chinese language computer interfaces, and how such interfaces affect user performance. Previous studies in this area are very limited. Some related studies have focused on the effects of menu item arrangement on visual search performance. These have shown contradictory results and are difficult to generalize. The results, however, may not be applicable to the Chinese populations since the participants in these studies were subjects from Western populations....[ Read more ]

As China embraces the Information technology era, it is important to understand how Chinese users interact with Chinese language computer interfaces, and how such interfaces affect user performance. Previous studies in this area are very limited. Some related studies have focused on the effects of menu item arrangement on visual search performance. These have shown contradictory results and are difficult to generalize. The results, however, may not be applicable to the Chinese populations since the participants in these studies were subjects from Western populations.

In this study a full screen Chinese language menu has been used. The objectives being (i) to analyze search patterns of native and non-native Chinese speakers; (ii) to evaluate the effect of the item arrangement (layout) on user performance; and (iii) to evaluate the effect of word complexity and choice of menu on user performance.

An eye-tracking system was used to record the search patterns of all participants. The results show that there are differences in search strategies between native and non-native Chinese speakers as well as between Hong Kong Chinese and Mainland Chinese. The horizontal search pattern gives a lower search time for Hong Kong Chinese. In addition, the horizontal search pattern results in a higher saccadic distance and lower fixation duration for both Chinese groups. The results also show that for a horizontal search pattern, the horizontal arrangement (row) of items results in a lower search time. Surprisingly, word complexity does not seem to affect the fixation duration of native Chinese participants even though it does affect performance accuracy. Finally, the relationships among the different factors have been modeled in order to understand the effects of different parameters on search time.