A Gestalt-like perceptual measure for home page design using a fuzzy entropy approach

Abstract

A home page is an entry interface of hyperdocuments for presenting a Website's information to visitors, which is mostly concerned with human perception in terms of users’ comprehension and mental representation. As the theory of Gestalt psychology provides an important perspective in human perception, it is appropriate to apply this theory in evaluating the “wholeness” of a perceptual image. In home page design, organizing the visual pattern on the basis of Gestalt principles can lead to an efficient model for a better perception. However, human perception referring to the non-quantifiable, subjective, and affect-based experience is difficult to be objectively and uniformly measured by a conventional research approach. In this paper, we propose a Gestalt-like perceptual measure method by combining Gestalt grouping principles and fuzzy entropy. The purpose of this proposed method is not to evaluate the grades of alternatives, but to measure the Gestalt-like perceptual degrees for home page design. An experimental study was conducted to evaluate the practicability of this method. In Part 1 of the experiment, the weights of evaluated criteria were identified through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) operation. A Gestalt-like perceptual measure for six selected home pages was further implemented in Part 2 of the experiment. The experimental study has shown a credible result. In addition to measuring the Gestalt perception of a Web page design, the proposed method can also be applied to related design fields such as plane design and other visual interface design.