Cognitive abilities and visual complexity impact first impressions in five-second testing

Five-second testing is a method commonly used by user research professionals to assess users' first impressions of user interfaces or product designs. Its rule of thumb, that five seconds is generally the right amount of time for users to report realistic and relevant first impressions, misrepresents the reality of human cognition. Users possess disparate levels of cognitive ability for processing stimuli that possess varied visual complexity. We conducted a complex experiment where participants complete an evaluation of their cognitive ability – working memory and perceptual speed. They are shown website stimuli of varied complexity over differing time periods (2/5/10 seconds) to answer a representative list of questions typical for evaluation of first impressions. We show that first impression feedback is rendered inconsistent by cognitive ability and visual complexity. Visually complex stimuli viewed for too short a time link to a problem with identifying the web page purpose. Participants with varied perceptual speed produce comparable results at 5 seconds, but at lower working memory, they provide less verbose answers and recall less information. These findings suggest that to receive relevant first impression feedback, the time for which participants are shown stimuli should be adapted to cognitive abilities and stimulus complexity.