Acta Polytechnica Hungarica Vol. 9, No. 1, 2012 – 139 – A New Method for the Characterization of the Perspicuity of User Interfaces Rita Mátrai 1 , Zsolt Tibor Kosztyán 2 1 Department of Informatics, Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: matrai.rita@btk.elte.hu 2 Department of Quantitative Methods, Faculty of Economics, Pannon University, Veszprém, Hungary, e-mail: kzst@vision.uni-pannon.hu Abstract: This paper presents a new method for the characterization of the perspicuity of user interfaces based on users’ navigation structures and reaction times. The user interface of a web page or software is good if users easily find information that they need. Therefore, it seems to be logical to give search tasks to the users and characterize the perspicuity of a user interface on the basis of the search time and navigation structure of the users. Experiments started with tasks where users did not have to read; they searched among 2D and 3D geometrical objects and among pictures. The experiment investigated which areas of the screen were preferred. These experiments were followed by tasks where the participant had to read as well. Here information was organized in columns because on web pages and news portals, the user is often confronted with layouts in columns and must search textual information ordered in columns. These tasks investigated how multi-column layout guides visual attention and how settings can help or disturb users to find information they need, settings such as the number of columns, target positions, word length, meaningful/meaningless context, colour of the fore- and background, size of the area which had to be scanned. Keywords: web usability; user interface; navigation; navigation strategy; web page layout 1 Introduction The importance of information communication via internet is nowadays undisputed. A web page should be well-organized and attractive so that users like to use it. Information seeking should not take a long time. The length of information seeking depends on the transparency of the web page. The appearance and usability of a web page affect users’ perceptions, emotional reactions and behavioural intensions, which are controlled by cognitive processes. This paper deals with the subject of how cognitive processes influence our information