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environment.
©Natalia Brown, School of Management
The University of Southampton.
nb1001@soton.ac.uk
Interface’09, 9-10 July, The University of Southampton.
Introduction.
The aim of my study is develop and validate the concept of visibility of the e-retail
environment based on “The ecological approach to visual perceptions” (Gibson 1979).
This paper will outline the significance of the study, study objectives and the proposed
theoretical model for visibility of the e-retail environment. Also a brief description of the
research methodology will be given.
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In the e-retail environment, there are no sales assistants and it is impossible to feel, touch,
or try the goods for sale. In addition, the information needed to make buying decisions
can be only perceived visually by potential customer. Therefore, this research focuses on
design principle of visibility which claimed to be “a key determinant in the successes of
an interface“(Kirsh 1997,p.84). In addition, it was suggested that visibility is ideally fit to
give theoretical underpinning for online decision making (Kirsh 1997). However, the
literature review did not identify any sets of accessible validated guidelines for achieving
visibility which are available for e-retail website designers. Norman (1988) proposed his
version of the visibility principle more then twenty years ago. It states that actions that a
user can perform should be obvious by just looking. However, his principle was never
empirically validated and implementation of Norman’s principle depends on designer’s
experience (Preece, Rogers et al. 2002; Rogers 2004; Shneiderman 2004). In addition, it
was found that there is not consensus among researchers what visibility is (Norman 1988;
Kirsh 1997; Helander and Khalid 2000; Nielsen 2001; Rogers 2004), regardless of
agreement among researchers that visibility principle has roots in The Ecological
approach to visual perceptions (Gibson 1979).
The ecological approach to visual perception (Gibson 1979) describes interactions
between humans and the environment in which they exist. Being a new and alternative
approach to cognitive physiology the ecological approach based on Gibson’s assertion
that people behave and act in their environment according to what they see. It was
revealed that the Ecological approach is being an important part of the theoretical
foundation of HCI however has not been applied to the e-retail environment. The
literature suggests that this is because there is no consensus amongst researchers who
contributed to the Ecological approach of HCI as they focuses on different aspects of the
original approach proposed by Gibson. This resulted that “ecology” or another words
system approach to environment as proposed by Gibson got missing (Rogers 2004).
Study objectives
The objectives of this study are
1. Conceptualise visibility of the e-retail environment taking the Ecological
approach to HCI.
2. Operationalise visibility of the e-retail environment.
3. Validate proposed visibility concept.
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3. Thirdly, there is an active observer at the point of observation who has visual
system and able to perceive information about the environment and actions
available in the environment and himself/herself in the environment. The point of
observation is a position in ecological space or in other words “the place where
observer might be and from which the act of observation could be made” Gibson
(1979, p 65). Changes in the environment as perceived by moving observer have a
double reference – they are informative about the environment and about the
observer (Neisser 1994).
Although in their theoretical work neither Gibson (1979) nor Neisser (1985) referred to
the visibility concept, however, a general definition of visibility was found in the
Chambers English Encyclopaedic dictionary. Visibility is “the state of fact of being
visible” where “to be visible” is “able to be seen” or “able to be realised or perceived”.
Therefore, visibility is a state of fact of being able to be seen or visually perceived. On
the other hand, according to Gibson “to see things is to see how to get about among them
and what to do or not to do with them” (p. 225).
Taking into account the three levels of analyses of Gibson’s (1979) environment the
visibility of the e-retail environment is divided into three subcomponents
1. Visibility of elements (things) of the e-retail environment
2. Visibility of actions available
3. Visibility of point of observation or visibility of location.
This is taken as foundation for a proposed theoretical model of the visibility concept. The
proposed theoretical model is further operationalysed by taking into account findings
from the literature review. The model is presented in Figure 1 and Table 1.
Figure 1 The proposed theoretical model of the visibility concept of the e-retail environment
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Visibility Visibility of elements Market Stimuli Price
Brand
Promotion
Variety
Product quality
Product
availability
Customisation
Services Payments
Delivery
Content
Security
Company FAQs
Call center
E-mail
One-to-one
Technical Intelligent agents
support for comparisons
4
Research methodology
This study research methodology is the Delphi survey which will have three stages
1. Revealing of the issues related to the e-retail environment
2. Determining the most important issues and their operationalisation – narrowing
down stage
3. Ranking the issues (marking or weighing will be considered).
Three rounds of questionnaires are expected.
Conclusions
This paper provided a brief outline of my research. The significance of the study was
discussed along with study objectives. In addition, proposed theoretical framework for
visibility of the e-retail environment was presented. Furthermore, brief research
methodology was proposed.
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