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Study reveals that some coping strategies only make the problem worse:
Five billion people spend almost half of their waking hours online. According to a new study from Aalto University, browser clutter is a serious problem for one in four of them. The results will be presented on April 27 at CHI 2023, the leading conference for human-computer interaction research.
'We began exploring which challenges make users feel overwhelmed when browsing the internet. We also mapped the behaviors that cause the clutter and how users react to the stress,' says Associate Professor and Head of Department Janne Lindqvist.
Browsing habits play a major role in cluttering up a browser. Using interviews and an online survey, the researchers found that clutter-related stress goes up when users keep a large number of tabs and browser windows open, as well as because of interactive elements like ads and pop-up windows.
Multitasking adds to the problem, and it gets worse if users are hesitant to close tabs or are dealing with complex tasks. Clutter also accumulates when users have tabs open related to different online activities – for example, if they're managing a travel reservation in one tab and chatting with friends or colleagues in another.
[...] The study found that many users react to stress by trying to change either their behavior or their attitude towards the clutter. Only the former, problem-focused solutions, proved helpful in solving the issue. An example solution would be to consciously minimize clutter by deciding on an upper limit to the number of tabs you have open.
[...] The researchers pointed out that 'organizing' techniques, such as using tools to manage tabs, might just lead to more clutter. 'These approaches are similar to someone not actually cleaning but just rearranging things in the same space – the problem doesn't go away,' says Lindqvist.
[...] 'We use computers every day, and it's definitely not always ideal. Many things would actually be much better handled only on paper,' he says. 'I look at this from the point of view of how we can live a meaningful and good life despite computers.'
How many tabs do you have open right now?
Journal Reference:
Rongjun Ma, Henrik Lassila, Leysan Nurgalieva, Janne Lindqvist, When Browsing Gets Cluttered: Exploring and Modeling Interactions of Browsing Clutter, Browsing Habits, and Coping [open], CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580690
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Tuesday May 16, @03:53PM (11 children)
A lot of this is because we have "experts" obsessed with UX that can't be bothered to pay attention to what users are doing and how they're doing it. So much has been done to make the interface look neat, without considering how that impacts the user. If anything, computers have gotten significantly harder to operate now than when things were primarily either DOS or MacOS.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday May 16, @07:25PM (2 children)
One big innovation in UX experience in browsers at about 1999 or 2000 ish was that if you closed a browser window, about four more windows with ads would pop up.
While Republicans can get over Trump's sexual assaults, affairs, and vulgarity; they cannot get over Obama being black.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday May 17, @12:24AM (1 child)
Yeah, I modded you insightful. Cuz the modern day UI folks who think hiding scroll bars, low contrast UIs, and 6 level menus to change these defaults are the same assholes who think popups are A Good Thing (tm).
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday May 17, @12:44PM
The sad thing is that pop ups were invented to be less of an issue for people browsing the site, then as is often the case, advertisers got their grubby hands on them and made it a nightmare for the rest of us. Especially those pop under ads with media.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday May 16, @07:50PM
I've observed a bit of a competition with web page designers. Maybe include all UX. They like to use every freaking gizmo and trickery they can find. I'm not quite sure who they're trying to impress- co-workers? bosses? Resume / HR? Friends? Dopey customers who think it's kewl?
All I know is I hate a lot of webpage designs. I realize many are catering to cellphone screen UX. Sigh. Some sites used to detect, or give you the option of the desktop or mobile page, but I haven't seen that anymore.
I started using Opera (still use Old Opera) maybe 1998. IIRC they invented tabs, but they also invented per-site settings, including turning OFF javascript, images, image animation, cookies, css, and a long list.
Whether Windows, MacOS, Android, IOS, or Linux, I do everything I can do cut out garbage, unneeded / unwanted processes, clutter, etc. What used to be fun- new OS / browser install, is now huge drudgery to go through and clean it all up.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday May 16, @08:27PM (2 children)
And none of them check what to do on"Websites that suck" or they would know that you DO NOT HIDE THE NAVIGATION - EVER!!!"
On top of that Icons only work if there are eight or less. Beyond that, no one who does not use the thing as a full time job knows what
they mean. (Assuming the icons mean anything at all, which most probably don't).
I understand that if you write the UI in English, only English speakers will understand. What I don't understand is how using Icons that
no one can understand is an improvement. You might need to Google "Locale" otherwise perhaps you should not be involved
in the software industry at all.
If you need to use pictures instead of words for some bizarre reason, you can use Kanji - it still works well for millions of people, even
after 4,000 years. Google cant keep an Icon alive for 4 months. I hope they never get near Tamagochis.
And why do the mouse-overs always prevent you from seeing the thing you want to click on? Do you not know what a punch in the face feels like?
.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @10:22PM (1 child)
Looks like Dr Spin has spun out...
Thanks for the rant!
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday May 18, @09:08PM
It is amazing what can be achieved after the fourth brandy.
(Just don't let me near the php).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 16, @11:58PM (1 child)
Yea, back around the late 1990s / early 2000s you had window management that ACTUALLY WORKED. You didn't need browser tabs because your task bar was ALREADY a tray full of tabs. In-application tabs were totally redundant.
But browser makers pushed tabs because the window management on MacOS X and Linux was shit... and then Microsoft brought the shit MacOS X was doing to Windows and then everyone needed browser tabs to stay afloat.
Hell the other day a cow-worker was insisting that he use that clunky-ass Google web based presentation thing to edit Power Point files rather than his local copy of Microsoft Power Point. Why? Because he wanted it "in a browser tab"!!!!!! That was the only reason!
Yes, just that. The Windows 11 task bar is just TOO FUCKED UP. (I was going to tell hem about this nice OS UI that had tabs at the bottom of the screen... and then eventually mention it was Windows 95)
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Wednesday May 17, @01:31AM
In windows thees days M$ offers a program called United Sets that lets you open multiple application windows as tabs in a single window. I don't know if you want to raise this with your cow-orker but it seems like it might be the feature they're looking for?
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday May 17, @06:35AM (1 child)
No kidding. And unlike back then, you can't even provide easy step by step instructions for the people you're trying to give them to.
Back with CLIs, you'd list a couple commands and be done. A complicated workflow took less than a page in a manual.
Today, you need GUI screenshots to tell people where to click and how to click on it (left, right or some supersecret handshake because left and right clicking have already been occupied by some other function), and of course in what order and when, so even the simplest of things someone might want to do takes multiple pages of multicolor pictures just to get the basics in.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday May 17, @12:50PM
The non-techies I point this out to think I've lost the plot, but IMHO, the best programs are CLI ones with a GUI that runs over the top of that if you need it. That way, you can more easily script the program if you want to automate it without having to go to extremes like Power Automate Desktop and if you need to explain to somebody how to do something, it's mostly a matter of giving them the command line arguments and indicating what each argument does. So long as you're not needing to do something like mixing audio or making judgments about image corrections, chances are that that's enough.
I also regularly use sed, awk, grep and xargs with command line utilities to quickly process a large number of files in one go. Doing the same with windows apps is a pain and usually requires power automate.
Commandlines are also helpful because there are utilities that allow you to record the entire session along with any messages without having to resort to videos. If something goes wrong or I forget what I did at a certain point, I can do a quick text search rather than watching the video.