Evaluation of Scrolling Techniques on the websites in the context of universal design

This research study is about an investigation to find out why infinite scrolling is not a good option for every website. The study presents an evaluation of scrolling techniques used on the website in the context of universal design. Normal scrolling, infinite scrolling, and improved version of infinite scrolling techniques were compared based on people’s activities; time-killing activities with serendipitous discovery and goaldriven finding activities. There are some studies done in the past to explore the issues scrolling techniques regarding usability and accessibility but not enough to investigate why infinite scrolling is not a good option for every website in the context of universal design. An empirical experiment was conducted with 16 participants. Four groups of tasks (based on people’s activities) were used under within-subject design approach to evaluate the newly designed four prototype websites based on four different scrolling techniques; Normal scrolling, infinite scrolling, infinite load more scrolling, and infinite pagination scrolling. To measure the performance and user satisfaction, total task completion time, the total number of errors done and participant’s opinion/preference (from post-experiment questionnaires) were used. Data collected from experiments were analyzed statistically using one-way repeated measure ANOVA tool. Statistically, there was no significant different result found for total task completion time and total numbers of errors done by participants. However, participant’s opinions were statistically significant, and the mixed results were found. The participants preferred either infinite scrolling or normal scrolling or infinite load more scrolling techniques for time-killing with serendipitous discovery activities while in case of goal-driven finding they preferred to use either normal scrolling or infinite load more scrolling technique. However, no one preferred to use infinite scrolling techniques for goal-driven finding activities. The findings of the analysis presented important information regarding different scrolling techniques, however, did not show a clear pattern to suggest that Infinite scrolling technique would be an appropriate technique to use in every website to make them more accessible and user-friendly. The findings from this study may be useful to investigate the relevant subject matter for future researchers