To a usability engineer, to anybody with a stopwatch and an itch to surf someplace else, it's quite easy to measure a picture's cost. Nielsen's studies back up our impatience with waiting. Yet how does one measure the other half of this equation? What are images worth in communication? Though we have no hard-and-fast answers yet, there are indications that graphics can improve recall of a site's information.
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Those shown stories with graphics forgot less. |
In a study published in the winter of 1998, Communication Research Reports, Gary Randolph found that graphics improved reader recall of web-based news. Nearly a hundred subjects read a version of a news story through a web browser -- either plain text, the text with graphics, text with hypertext links, or text with both graphics and links. Immediately after reading the stories, subjects were quizzed on their comprehension. Those who read the stories with graphics did about as well as the group. But tested again a week later they did significantly better; those shown graphics had forgotten less (Randolph).
Curiously enough, Randolph did not find that hypertext without graphics seemed to aid his subjects' recall. Those who read the stories with hypertext links but with no graphics did the worst on comprehension tests both immediately and after one week.
While one hundred students do not a network audience make, this study merits consideration, particularly because similar studies have indicated that graphics aid retention of newspaper and television news.