Do Zebra Stripes Actually Help? 234
RyoShin writes "A List Apart, an excellent resource for web development and related aesthetics, has put together an article based on original research by Jessica Enders into 'zebra striping.' From the article: 'Zebra striping [coloring alternate rows] is used when data is presented in an essentially tabular form. The user of that table will be looking for one or more data points. Their aim is to get the right points and get them as quickly as possible. Therefore, if we set a task that uses a table, and zebra striping does make things easier, then we would expect to see improvements in two things: accuracy and speed.' The conclusion of the peer reviewed paper? It's a wash. Striped tables offered only a slight increase in accuracy and speed overall. The article notes a few other benefits to using Zebra striping, so it's all up to the individual."
a candidate for the ignobel prize? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about scalability? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also the size of the table makes a difference.
A test without fatigued test subjects... (Score:5, Insightful)
They absolutely help (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, they certainly can't hurt, especially if they're a pale color. So why are we even having this discussion?
Re:It looks nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coloring every 3rd or 5th row helps too (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't try 2-row striping -- for some reason it just looks wrong, like each pair is supposed to be related. Probably because it's just less common.
Re:It looks nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't an improvement in accuracy is better than no improvement, or a decrease?
Re:It looks nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Most UI differences are small; the difference between having the task bar in the middle of the screen and on the edge of the screen is very small as well, but that doesn't make it not worth doing.
Re:It looks nice (Score:4, Insightful)
An obvious problem with the study (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An obvious problem with the study (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought it was self-evidentary that stripes should run the same way you're most likely to scan.. so you don't have to work too hard to keep your eyesight on the same line. Apparently it wasn't that evident though.
That said, zebra-stripes are nice when you choose good colours, and have them run in the direction they're supposed to.. and they're really horrible when you screw up.. as a lot of people do.
sample size too low, and wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Given that applying zebra striping in an electronic medium is a nontrivial task"
Say what? Any application that is based on columns and/or rows has trivial access to those columns/rows as separate entities. Markup for such columns/rows is easily changed. 'mod N 2 == 0? grey:white' is hardly nontrivial, it's so basic that if you can't manage to do it, you must be using the wrong software.
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Now for the scope - it seems like the only research they have done is when data in the sheet is dense and the sheet itself is not all that wide.
Now try with a wide sheet and instead of every 'cell' or at least one of its close neighbors having data in it, imagine lots of empty cells. Now try and see if zebrastriping helps or not. I can guarantee you that without any visual cues, your lining up of something in the leftmost column to the same line on the rightmost column is going to fail far more often than you'd like.
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Oh wait, they even admit as much:
"However, there is clearly a need for additional studies to investigate how task difficulty and the size of the table/form influence the effect of zebra striping."
No shit. I'm glad you admitted that your sample size is too low.
What about the animals? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A test without fatigued test subjects... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It looks nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It looks nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Shading in every third line actually provides the eye a stronger guideline. In the description of the study, they don't test that. I think that's a tremendous oversight on their part. It really seems like they did the study to prove a point.
Questions are bizzare (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what I view as correct answers:
Q What is the name of the screw that costs $35.66?
A: None. The M28 screw costs $35.66 per 50.
Q There are 664 screws of which minor diameter tolerance?
A: None. The M18 Screw has a minor diameter tolerance of 8g, and there are 664 of those, but there are 1442 screws with a tolerance of 8g.
Q: There are 292 screws of what thread pitch?
A: None. There are 292 M16 screws which have a thread pitch of 2mm, but there are 527 screws with a thread pitch of 2mm.
Another problem (Score:3, Insightful)
http://alistapart.com/d/zebrastripingdoesithelp/data-table.png [alistapart.com]
The "ordinary" rows have a background color of pure white. The "striped" rows have a background color of #F5F5F5, a very light grey. I'm all in favor of subtle design, but there is such a thing as being too subtle.
Perhaps the stripes did not help noticeably because there was insufficient contrast between the rows?
Re:It looks nice (Score:5, Insightful)
second, authetically pleasing is also worth points when it doesn't hurt anything else.
third, and perhaps most importantly, just because I can drive as fast and as safely on a sunny day as I can on an over-cast day, doesn't mean that one isn't easier than the other. professional typers type just as quickly on a qwerty keyboard as they do on a dvorak keyboard because they are professional typers and will adapt to just about anything. But they still expend more effort on a owerty keyboard than on a dvorak one -- simply put, their fingers travel farther.
I don't suppose that this experiment studied the cognitive effort required, nor stressed the patricipants to measure their accuracy during significant distraction -- like driving, or listening to something important, or carrying a conversation, or giving a presentation.
Re:It looks nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Zebra striping becomes more useful the further apart the key row is from the data in the row. It also becomes more important if there are no lines between the rows and columns. It's practically essential when you're trying to view a wide table where the key must be scrolled off screen to view the pertinent data.
In this study, the key row was the tolerance in grams, and the data was the factory outlet boolean. They were an inch and a half apart from each other, and there was no necessity to interpret multiple values in a row, but only vertically scan the key column and test for the existence of a row that has yes in the factory outlet column right next to it.
These people are spreading misinformation. The study was so contrived to support the premise, and so consciously avoidant of the actual situations where zebra striping becomes useful, that it's difficult to believe it wasn't intentionally done. If nothing else, there was far, far too little study done to make any conclusion whatsoever.
Whoever is behind article this should be working at MacDonalds.
whoa, even worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Zebra striping may or may not help significantly, but this paper won't tell you either way.
Re:Do Zebra Stripes Actually Help? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why DVD menus in all incarnations shouldn't exist! I can imagine how frustrating that can be, I've had problems using DVD menus and I'm not color blind. I've also had to sit though a class were a professor was trying to show a clip from a DVD, but the DVD menu designer didn't make the highlight color contrast enough for a projector, needless to say a lot of time was wasted while the professor tried to guess when the correct item was selected.
I really hate DVD menus. At the very least make them optional, like a dust cover on a book. That way I can toss the uselessness away, just like I do with dust covers. The functionality of the menus should be built into the player with a nice accessible UI.