What, where and how are young people looking for in a search engine results page?: impact of typographical cues and prior domain knowledge

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an experiment that uses the eye-tracking technique to help us understand how young people (recruited from Grade 5 to Grade 11) explore a search engine results page (SERP) to find information. In particular, we looked at how varying the typographical cuing in Web search results (With boldface versus No boldface) and the familiarity of the search topic (Familiar versus Unfamiliar) affected user visual strategies. Results have mainly showed that (1) typographical cuing and prior domain knowledge influence the visual exploration of a SERP, that (2) four different visual strategies can be identified for young people (F-shaped strategy, Exhaustive strategy, Cued visual jumps, and F-inverse strategy), and that (3) the distribution of these strategies depends on the grade level and on the degree of familiarity of the search topic (i.e., the level of prior domain knowledge).