Developing and validating the concept of visibility of the e-retail

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.

The significance of the study.

Rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology have dramatically changed the way people live, communicate, and work. Convergence of inventions in computing such as the silicon chip, the personal computer (PC), graphical user interfaces (GUI) together with inventions in communication technology such as fibre optic cables, packet switching, Internet and WWW has impacted on business, society and the whole economy (Avison and Fitzgerald 2003; Ayres and Williams 2004). Nowadays, with broadband becoming as essential a utility as electricity or water, according to a panel of government advisers (Cellan-Jones 2009), majority of UK consumers buy products online. In 2007, the value of UK e-retail sales was £46.6 billion. Companies still sell products and provide services by applying same strategies however using a different way to conduct business – the Internet. Traditional consumer -retailer relationships became consumer-website-retailer. A company website has become the only mean to support the goal of the online retailer that is to persuade the online visitor to buy from that particular retailer and become a customer (Porter 2001). Therefore, website design became critical to achieve competitive advantage in a very intense online business environment (Porter 2001) where all competition is only one click away (Nielsen 2000). In addition, it should be designed taken into account not only business goals but although human perspectives (Miles, Howes et al. 2000) to deliver a human centred design approach (Preece, Rogers et al. 2002). However, it was found in a literature review that the majority of websites are designed taken into account business goals but not human perspectives (Shneiderman 2004). To design interfaces taking into account human perspectives is the focus of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) discipline. The HCI is a science of design (Carroll 1997; Carroll 2006) which takes theoretical foundation from cognitive psychology. This study aims to bring knowledge of Human-Computer Interaction into e-retail domain.

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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.

Developing the proposed theoretical model for visibility of e-retail environment.

Visibility of e-retail environment is conceptualised taken into account Gibson’s (1979) ideas that the ecological approach to visual perception distinguishes three levels of analyses.

1. Firstly, there is the environment itself that are things which are available for perception. Gibson described elements, which are structured and organised in layouts and can be sequenced.

2. Secondly, there are opportunities for actions or affordances, which also can be sequenced.

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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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Price Brand Promotion Variety Product quality Product availability

Market Stimuli

Customisation Payments Delivery Content

Services

Security FAQs Call center E-mail

Company

One-to-one

Visibility of elements

Technical support

Intelligent agents for comparisons

Actions at every choice point Feedback

Visibility of actions

Consequences of actions User location Feedback about user changing location

Visibility

Visibility of the point of observation (location)

Possibility for changing location Table 1 Visibility of the e-retail environment Although the e-retail environment is theoretically derived by analogy to the real environment as suggested in “The Ecological approach to visual perception” (Gibson 1979), however this study is the first attempt to apply Gibson’s theory to the e-retail domain. Therefore, a concept of the e-retail environment based on Gibson’s three levels of analyses and related to it concept of visibility and its operatiolisation proposed in this research should be validated by a rigorous research method. The opinion of online buyers regardless their level of experience should be taken into consideration to insure a user centred design approach. In this study, the Delphi method will be used as an “opinion technology” to determine the consensus in opinions about elements and related issues of the e-retail environment by collecting opinions among a group of online buyers. This will be aligned with the user centred design approach. The Delphi opinion survey aims to provide valid operationalisation of the visibility principle and in addition, this will validate or reject the proposed theoretical model of the e-retail environment based on the Ecological approach to visual perceptions.

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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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