Visual Saliency Predicts Fixations in Low Clutter Web Pages

Previous research has shown a computational model of visual saliency can predict where people fixate in cluttered web pages (Masciocchi & Still, 2013). Over time, web site designers are moving towards simpler, less cluttered webpages to improve aesthetics and to make searches more efficient. Even with simpler interfaces, determining a saliency ranking among interface elements is a difficult task. Also, it is unclear whether the traditionally employed saliency model (Itti, Koch, & Niebur, 1998) can be applied to simpler interfaces. To examine the model’s ability to predict fixations in simple web pages we compared a distribution of observed fixations to a conservative measure of chance performance (a shuffled distribution). Simplicity was determined by using two visual clutter models (Rosenholz, Li, & Nakano, 2007). We found under free-viewing conditions that the saliency model was able to predict fixations within less cluttered web pages.