41 Type II Error (IMO)

I personally think that zebra stripes help find information quicker, especially in wider tables.

I hypothesize that if you were to set up the experiment in a lab, ask a question and have the person find and say the answer to you as quickly as possible, you would find that zebra stripes increase the speed.

One aspect of this experimental design that I feel could influence the results is that fact that people have to fill in the a form and submit the question online. There is variability in the amount of time to locate the data entry box, in typing speeds etc. I think if you were to test people in a lab and have them say the answer immediately after finding it, a lot of these confounds would be eliminated.

Good study, but based on the null hypothesis that zebra striping does not increase speed or accuracy, I think there exists a Type II error (at least more so for the initial study):P

posted at 10:19 am on November 12, 2008 by Chris Hayes

42 Great Data

posted at 11:48 pm on February 11, 2009 by Fornecedores Clientes

43 Would the difference between striped and non-strip

Firstly, Great article.

It would be interesting to see if the discrepency in favor of single striping is increased as the number of columns between the reference column (the country) and the data column increases. It seems that there is little difference for adjacent columns and a small but noticable difference when separated by one column.

What would be the effect if the reference and data were separated by say 8 columns of other data. I would imagine that you would see a predictable (probably linear) increase in the effectiveness of the zebra striped table.

posted at 04:52 am on March 1, 2010 by Gumgatron

44 I think it depends on what else is on the page

I think this is a fantastic article! Thank you for all of your time in putting this together.

I also think that it’s very hard to take a specific finding on usability and apply it to all circumstances. It’s the unity of the page, and how all entities involved in it work together that count.

For instance, if I have several tables on one page, and am defining and comparing the information within them, then I may choose not to have the zebra stripes, which fight visually with the divisional space between the tables.

posted at 02:00 am on January 31, 2012 by maniamom