How do we react to cluttered displays? Evidence from the first seconds of visual search in websites

Display clutter is known to degrade search performance and lead to differences in eye movement measures in different contexts. The goal of this study was to determine whether these differences in eye movements could be detected in the first few seconds of a search task using a realistic display, both with or without time pressure. Participants were asked to search for image or word targets in 40 website screenshots. Time pressure was introduced for half the trials. Clutter algorithms were used to classify the websites as low- or high-clutter. Performance, subjective, and eye-tracking metrics were collected. Results showed that people's attention allocation within the first 3 s of search is different when viewing high-clutter websites. In particular, people's spread of attention was larger in high-clutter websites. The results can be used to detect whether a person is struggling with clutter early on after they view a display. Practitioner summary: Eye-tracking metrics showed that people react differently to a cluttered website in a variety of conditions. These differences were evident within the first 3 s of the search. The eye-tracking metrics identified can be used to detect people struggling with clutter as soon as they look at a website.