Icons, text or a combination of both? : - How to create the most efficient user journey and best user experience online

Abstract: Background The focus within Human Computer Interaction has shifted from not only understanding the usability of a website for the user, but more towards understanding the user's experience as well. The usage of icons as the main means of relying on information, and to help the user navigate around screen-based platforms, has steadily increased during the past decade. Yet the majority of desktop users still rely on text as the means for main navigation on websites. Prior research has emphasised the importance of icons in a web environment, but to the best of our knowledge, no studies have been conducted regarding what kind of website has a more efficient user journey.  Purpose The purpose of the study was to explore what kind of website has a more efficient user journey when it comes to looking for the most efficient path; a website that uses icons instead of text for navigation or vice versa, or a website that uses a hybrid approach, meaning both text and icons. The goal was to be able to present an overview of the subject.  Method The research methods chosen were ​​a user study with 30 participants divided equally into three groups, which were then asked to do four small tasks on their assigned website. This was followed by answering three different questionnaires in order to get a deeper insight into how they perceived the websites that were tested; NASA-TLX, SUS, and UEQ. This was later structured and analysed by using IBM SPSS Statistics, in order to be able to draw conclusions regarding completion times, experiences, etc. Findings The website with a combination of both text and icons was arguably the best when it came to assessing the best user experience, and the text based website was the best one when it came to efficiency and performance. Further research Suggestions for further research include making a similar larger study, in order to be able to put the sample onto a population with greater guarantee, to perform the study in different countries and in that way be able to present a comparative view, and finally to explore the subject further, by looking into our findings and conclusions in order to see why the results looked like they did.