新聞網頁留白量對青壯兩代使用者的影響

The Effect of White Space in News Web Pages on Young and Middle-Aged Users

各種視覺設計元素，如字體大小、色彩、對比、欄數、間距、版面排列、字體、圖片大小、刺激物數量、資訊量多寡、情境等，皆有可能影響網頁瀏覽績效與使用性。這些元素構成的大量資訊，會對使用者造成負擔，且各族群因生、心理的限制，可接受的資訊承載量不盡相同。與各種視覺設計相對應的元素為留白，故本研究旨在探討使用者對不同網頁留白量的使用性、美感與價值感的偏好，以四種新聞網頁為測試樣本，分別為45％留白量寬間距、55％留白量寬間距、45％留白量窄間距、55％留白量窄間距，招募16至30歲的青年與46至60歲的壯年使用者進行研究，同時收集使用者背景包含學歷等基本資料等；排除真實網頁文字、圖片內容等干擾視覺感受的因子，以實驗法進行網頁留白量的偏好測試。研究結果顯示，壯年使用者評比45％留白量寬間距總分最高，青年使用者評比55％留白量寬間距總分最高。本研究以留白比例為設計變項，期望設計師未來設計網頁時，不再受限於多樣設計元素之間的平衡與調整，其結果可優化對目標族群的網頁設計原則，提供一個便於評估網頁使用性、美感與價值感的方法，並在未來發展以人工智慧為基礎的自動化設計。

Web browsing performance and usability could be influenced by various visual design elements such as font sizes, colors, contrast, columns, spacing, layout, font styles, image sizes, stimuli, information load, context, and so on. This mass information derived from these elements might be a burden to users who have different information loads due to dissimilar physical and psychological limitations. This study regarded white space as a complimentary visual design element. The purposes of this study were to explore user preferences of usability, aesthetics and perceived value to different amounts of white space in web pages. The experimental samples were a set of four news web pages with 55% white space and wide spacing, 55% white space and narrow spacing, 45% white space and wide spacing, 45% white space and narrow spacing. Two groups of young and middle-aged participants aged between 16-30 and 46-60 years were recruited for this study to collect the participants’ preference data and their background information. This study used an experiment to explore user preferences to the amount of white space in web pages by excluding factors such as real text and images that could interfere with visual perception. The result revealed that the web page with 45% white space and wide spacing was evaluated with the highest score by the middle-aged users, and the web page with 55% white space and wide spacing was evaluated with the highest score by the young users. This study used the percentage of white space as a design variable. It is hoped that in the future designing of web pages, designers will not be confined to the balance and adjustment of multiple design elements. The result could optimize design principles of web pages for target user groups and provide a convenient method to evaluate the usability, aesthetics and perceived value of web pages. It could also be used in the future for artificial intelligence based design automation.