![](\"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/images\/nta-all.jpg\" "\\"Thinking")
Having participants think aloud is a valuable tool used in UX research.<\/p>\nHaving participants think aloud is a valuable tool used in UX research.<\/p>\n
It’s primarily used to understand participants’ mental processes, which can ultimately uncover problems with an interface.<\/p>\n
It has a rich history in the behavioral sciences that dates back over a century<\/a>. Despite its value, it’s not without its controversy.<\/p>\n Some research has shown that depending on the activity, having participants think aloud can actually affect their behavior [pdf]<\/a>.<\/p>\n But further research has shown that how the behavior is affected is very much a matter of context and what’s being asked. Sweeping generalizations about the effect of think aloud on behavior should be used with caution<\/i>.<\/p>\n There are a number of ways to assess the effects of thinking aloud on behavior, including<\/p>\n One good place to start investigating the effects of thinking aloud is how and where people look at webpages. If thinking aloud causes people to systematically look at each part of a page differently, then it’s likely other metrics can be affected: for example, task time, usability problems encountered, and attitudinal metrics collected in standardized questionnaires. Tracking where participants look is a good place to start because it’s more sensitive to subtle differences compared to blunt measures like task completion rates.<\/p>\n Earlier research on the effects of thinking aloud (often called Concurrent Thinking Aloud or CTA) on where and how people look has mixed results. Eger found<\/a> [pdf] that more problems were uncovered when participants thought aloud when watching videos of their own gaze paths (called Retrospective Think Aloud) compared to Concurrently Thinking Aloud. They also found participants completed fewer tasks and had slightly longer task completion times when they thought aloud. They didn’t indicate how participants gaze paths were or were not affected though.<\/p>\n In a study by Hertzum et al<\/a> [pdf], researchers found participants took longer to solve tasks and had an increase in mental workload while thinking aloud; they also found some difference in where people looked when thinking aloud. They separated thinking aloud into classic think aloud (as explained by Ericsson and Simon<\/a> [pdf]) and what they call Relaxed Thinking Aloud, something more akin to what practitioners do today<\/a>).<\/p>\n During Relaxed Thinking Aloud they found eye-movements (saccades) were of shorter duration for an assessment task and suggested it was a function of decreased visual search<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another study by Ogolla<\/a> [pdf] found that participants had more fixations and more of the screen was viewed on low information scent tasks<\/a> when participants thought aloud. This suggested participants “looked around more” when thinking aloud, something akin to “surveying<\/a>” a page before beginning a task.<\/p>\n In another study of 95 adults viewing the U.S. Census Bureau website, Romano Bergstrom and Olmsted-Hawala found<\/a> thinking aloud affected where participants looked on the website. They reported different numbers of eye-fixations<\/a> on the top and left navigation areas of the website across two tasks depending on whether the participants were concurrently thinking aloud or retrospectively thinking aloud.<\/p>\n The difference was most pronounced between the oldest and youngest cohort and within the young cohort. For example, young adults had twice the number of eye-fixations<\/a> in the navigation when concurrently thinking aloud.<\/p>\n We wanted to further understand how thinking aloud may affect where and how participants view websites but wanted to include more websites and a variety of layouts (also a suggestion for future research in the Bergstrom and Olmsted-Hawala study).<\/p>\n To help minimize the variables, we started with a core activity: viewing the homepage of a website. In earlier research we’ve seen that first impressions<\/a> of websites can have a significant impact on attitudinal measures and task success. But does thinking aloud affect where people look on homepages?<\/p>\n We selected 20 homepages across a few industries and measured participants’ gaze paths in our lab in Denver, CO using our SMI eye tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Prior Research<\/h2>\n
The Study<\/h2>\n
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