Evaluating Web page color and layout adaptations

An adaptive Web site molds itself to the user, creating a unique interaction, providing a more enjoyable experience, and increasing the success of an interaction. We studied the effect of Web page adaptations on information-finding tasks. Although many user interface components, such as page content and Web links, can be altered to produce adaptations, we limited our work exclusively to altering color and layout. The hypothesis we studied in our research was that these adaptations would let users complete tasks in a shorter time and that this effect would occur whether the adaptations were used individually or together. We designed a Web-based experiment that required each subject to answer three questions. The subjects could find the answer for each by searching through a local copy of a portion of IBM's 2000 Sydney Olympics Web site. Our experiments involved 128 student participants from WPI. To focus on the effects of the adaptations, we used predetermined adaptations, creating a set of static Web sites containing all the adaptations we planned to study. To reduce the potential effects of learning and to compensate for adaptation order, we kept the experiment brief and used a balanced experimental design. Statistical analysis suggests that there's significant support from the experimental data for the hypothesis.