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The Relationship Between Visual Website Complexity and a User’s Mental Workload: A NeuroIS Perspective

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Book cover Information Systems and Neuroscience

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 16))

Abstract

I report results from an experiment on the relationship between visual website complexity and users’ mental workload. Applying a pupillary based workload assessment as a NeuroIS methodology, I found indications that a balanced level of navigation complexity, i.e., the number of (sub)menus, in combination with a balanced level of information complexity, is the best choice from a user’s mental workload perspective.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Christiane Lange for laboratory assistance and the reviewers, who provided very helpful comments on the refinement of the paper. This research is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (03FH055PX2).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FOM University of Applied Sciences, MIS-Institute, Munich, Germany

    Ricardo Buettner

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  1. Ricardo Buettner
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Correspondence to Ricardo Buettner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Informaton Systems, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA

    Fred D. Davis

  2. University of Appl. Sc. Upper Austria, Steyr, Oberösterreich, Austria

    René Riedl

  3. Department of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

    Jan vom Brocke

  4. Department of Information Technology, HEC Montréal , Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Pierre-Majorique Léger

  5. Department of Information Systems, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA

    Adriane B. Randolph

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Buettner, R. (2017). The Relationship Between Visual Website Complexity and a User’s Mental Workload: A NeuroIS Perspective. In: Davis, F., Riedl, R., vom Brocke, J., Léger, PM., Randolph, A. (eds) Information Systems and Neuroscience. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41402-7_14

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