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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: 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]