Developing and validating the concept of visibility of the e-retail

environment.
©Natalia Brown, School of Management
The University of Southampton.
nb1001@soton.ac.uk
Interface’09, 9-10 July, The University of Southampton.

Introduction.
The aim of my study is develop and validate the concept of visibility of the e-retail
environment based on “The ecological approach to visual perceptions” (Gibson 1979).
This paper will outline the significance of the study, study objectives and the proposed
theoretical model for visibility of the e-retail environment. Also a brief description of the
research methodology will be given.

The significance of the study.

Rapid developments in Information and Communication Technology have dramatically
changed the way people live, communicate, and work. Convergence of inventions in
computing such as the silicon chip, the personal computer (PC), graphical user interfaces
(GUI) together with inventions in communication technology such as fibre optic cables,
packet switching, Internet and WWW has impacted on business, society and the whole
economy (Avison and Fitzgerald 2003; Ayres and Williams 2004). Nowadays, with
broadband becoming as essential a utility as electricity or water, according to a panel of
government advisers (Cellan-Jones 2009), majority of UK consumers buy products
online. In 2007, the value of UK e-retail sales was £46.6 billion.
Companies still sell products and provide services by applying same strategies however
using a different way to conduct business – the Internet. Traditional consumer -retailer
relationships became consumer-website-retailer. A company website has become the only
mean to support the goal of the online retailer that is to persuade the online visitor to buy
from that particular retailer and become a customer (Porter 2001). Therefore, website
design became critical to achieve competitive advantage in a very intense online business
environment (Porter 2001) where all competition is only one click away (Nielsen 2000).
In addition, it should be designed taken into account not only business goals but although
human perspectives (Miles, Howes et al. 2000) to deliver a human centred design
approach (Preece, Rogers et al. 2002). However, it was found in a literature review that
the majority of websites are designed taken into account business goals but not human
perspectives (Shneiderman 2004).
To design interfaces taking into account human perspectives is the focus of the Human-
Computer Interaction (HCI) discipline. The HCI is a science of design (Carroll 1997;
Carroll 2006) which takes theoretical foundation from cognitive psychology. This study
aims to bring knowledge of Human-Computer Interaction into e-retail domain.

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In the e-retail environment, there are no sales assistants and it is impossible to feel, touch,
or try the goods for sale. In addition, the information needed to make buying decisions
can be only perceived visually by potential customer. Therefore, this research focuses on
design principle of visibility which claimed to be “a key determinant in the successes of
an interface“(Kirsh 1997,p.84). In addition, it was suggested that visibility is ideally fit to
give theoretical underpinning for online decision making (Kirsh 1997). However, the
literature review did not identify any sets of accessible validated guidelines for achieving
visibility which are available for e-retail website designers. Norman (1988) proposed his
version of the visibility principle more then twenty years ago. It states that actions that a
user can perform should be obvious by just looking. However, his principle was never
empirically validated and implementation of Norman’s principle depends on designer’s
experience (Preece, Rogers et al. 2002; Rogers 2004; Shneiderman 2004). In addition, it
was found that there is not consensus among researchers what visibility is (Norman 1988;
Kirsh 1997; Helander and Khalid 2000; Nielsen 2001; Rogers 2004), regardless of
agreement among researchers that visibility principle has roots in The Ecological
approach to visual perceptions (Gibson 1979).
The ecological approach to visual perception (Gibson 1979) describes interactions
between humans and the environment in which they exist. Being a new and alternative
approach to cognitive physiology the ecological approach based on Gibson’s assertion
that people behave and act in their environment according to what they see. It was
revealed that the Ecological approach is being an important part of the theoretical
foundation of HCI however has not been applied to the e-retail environment. The
literature suggests that this is because there is no consensus amongst researchers who
contributed to the Ecological approach of HCI as they focuses on different aspects of the
original approach proposed by Gibson. This resulted that “ecology” or another words
system approach to environment as proposed by Gibson got missing (Rogers 2004).

Study objectives
The objectives of this study are
1. Conceptualise visibility of the e-retail environment taking the Ecological
approach to HCI.
2. Operationalise visibility of the e-retail environment.
3. Validate proposed visibility concept.

Developing the proposed theoretical model for visibility of e-retail environment.

Visibility of e-retail environment is conceptualised taken into account
Gibson’s (1979) ideas that the ecological approach to visual perception distinguishes
three levels of analyses.
1. Firstly, there is the environment itself that are things which are available for
perception. Gibson described elements, which are structured and organised in
layouts and can be sequenced.
2. Secondly, there are opportunities for actions or affordances, which also can be
sequenced.

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 3. Thirdly, there is an active observer at the point of observation who has visual
system and able to perceive information about the environment and actions
available in the environment and himself/herself in the environment. The point of
observation is a position in ecological space or in other words “the place where
observer might be and from which the act of observation could be made” Gibson
(1979, p 65). Changes in the environment as perceived by moving observer have a
double reference – they are informative about the environment and about the
observer (Neisser 1994).
Although in their theoretical work neither Gibson (1979) nor Neisser (1985) referred to
the visibility concept, however, a general definition of visibility was found in the
Chambers English Encyclopaedic dictionary. Visibility is “the state of fact of being
visible” where “to be visible” is “able to be seen” or “able to be realised or perceived”.
Therefore, visibility is a state of fact of being able to be seen or visually perceived. On
the other hand, according to Gibson “to see things is to see how to get about among them
and what to do or not to do with them” (p. 225).
Taking into account the three levels of analyses of Gibson’s (1979) environment the
visibility of the e-retail environment is divided into three subcomponents
1. Visibility of elements (things) of the e-retail environment
2. Visibility of actions available
3. Visibility of point of observation or visibility of location.
This is taken as foundation for a proposed theoretical model of the visibility concept. The
proposed theoretical model is further operationalysed by taking into account findings
from the literature review. The model is presented in Figure 1 and Table 1.

Figure 1 The proposed theoretical model of the visibility concept of the e-retail environment

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Visibility Visibility of elements Market Stimuli Price
Brand
Promotion
Variety
Product quality
Product
availability
Customisation
Services Payments
Delivery
Content
Security
Company FAQs
Call center
E-mail
One-to-one
Technical Intelligent agents
support for comparisons

Visibility of actions Actions at every choice point

Feedback
Consequences of actions
Visibility of the point of User location
observation (location) Feedback about user changing
location
Possibility for changing location
Table 1 Visibility of the e-retail environment

Although the e-retail environment is theoretically derived by analogy to the real

environment as suggested in “The Ecological approach to visual perception” (Gibson
1979), however this study is the first attempt to apply Gibson’s theory to the e-retail
domain. Therefore, a concept of the e-retail environment based on Gibson’s three levels
of analyses and related to it concept of visibility and its operatiolisation proposed in this
research should be validated by a rigorous research method. The opinion of online buyers
regardless their level of experience should be taken into consideration to insure a user
centred design approach.
In this study, the Delphi method will be used as an “opinion technology” to determine the
consensus in opinions about elements and related issues of the e-retail environment by
collecting opinions among a group of online buyers. This will be aligned with the user
centred design approach. The Delphi opinion survey aims to provide valid
operationalisation of the visibility principle and in addition, this will validate or reject the
proposed theoretical model of the e-retail environment based on the Ecological approach
to visual perceptions.

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Research methodology
This study research methodology is the Delphi survey which will have three stages
1. Revealing of the issues related to the e-retail environment
2. Determining the most important issues and their operationalisation – narrowing
down stage
3. Ranking the issues (marking or weighing will be considered).
Three rounds of questionnaires are expected.

Conclusions
This paper provided a brief outline of my research. The significance of the study was
discussed along with study objectives. In addition, proposed theoretical framework for
visibility of the e-retail environment was presented. Furthermore, brief research
methodology was proposed.

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