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Over the last 20 years the web has changed the world, but what, if anything, has it done to us? Take part in a unique experiment to discover the impact the web is having on our brains, and discover which species of web animal you are. The Web Behaviour Test is designed to answer the question: are people who use the web a lot different to people who don’t?

In the space of less than a decade, the web has moved us from a state of ‘information poverty’ to one of ‘information affluence’ on a scale that would have been truly incomprehensible at any other time in human history.
How are we handling this massive transition? Are there possible downsides as well as the very obvious benefits? These are important questions and we need your help to answer them.

How much of today’s online journey do you actually remember?
What did you do on the web today? How long did you spend online and how many sites did you visit?

Perhaps, like me, you received an email from a popular social networking site, prompting you to check out how an old friend was doing. Did their latest blog entry inspire you to book your summer holiday? And while you were thinking about it, buy a Spanish phrase book and check out the best deal on travel insurance as well?

And all this without leaving your chair?
The web has become so deeply embedded in our lives that for most of us it offers a completely seamless experience, weaving the virtual and the real into a continuous and largely indistinguishable thread.
We might surf while watching TV, tweet our friends during a particularly boring college lecture, or check out the best prices for a new laptop while listening to music on an iPod.
So how much concentration did you really give to searching information on the web today? When you picked that search engine result, what were the cues that triggered that first click? How confident were you – really – about the information that came back?
And what was more important: convenience or content?
A peer to pier network?
Are you paying attention or just skimming?

What is ‘web behaviour’?
A new area of science is beginning to emerge that looks at questions of how real people behave online. How effective are we are at gathering and evaluating information and turning it into action?

This area of science is so new, we don’t even have a name for it yet, so let’s just call it `web behaviour’ for now. One thing seems fairly certain: it’s going to become really, really important as the web’s tentacles stretch further and further into every aspect of our lives.

How exactly do people find information, from the latest celebrity news to self-diagnosis when we feel unwell?
Frankly, we know alarmingly little about how people really interact with the web. This is disturbing, given our colossal investment in information and communication technologies.

At the core of our new science of ‘web behaviour’ lie some very simple questions:

1: How able are we to filter the enormous amount of information delivered to us by search engines?
2: How confident are we in our ability to find the ‘right answer’ when looking for information on the web?
3: How much do we concentrate when we’re using the web, even when we’re using it to make potentially life-changing decisions?
4:What is the role of memory in shaping what we do on the web? (How much of today’s online journey do you actually remember?)
5: How influential are ‘super brands’ in defining the choices we make online?
6: How do we decide on the reliability or ‘authority’ of information provided by others online?

By taking part in this exciting online experiment, you will be helping to answer these and other important questions, opening up whole new areas of research and improving our understanding of the changing world.
Will young people learn to process information in different ways?

Which web animal are you?
By taking part in the Web Behaviour Test, you’ll also be able to find out what sort of ‘web animal’ you are. You may well now be asking yourself: what on earth is a web animal?
When we started designing this experiment, we talked about web behaviour in terms of ‘fox’ and ‘hedgehog’ people. Why? Strangely enough, because of a cryptic fragment of poetry by the ancient Greek writer Archilochus, which reads:

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

For us, this was a good way of describing two broad groups of web users: sophisticated, social web users adept at skimming for information and multitasking (foxes) and less-sophisticated, non-social web users who focus on one task at a time and have a slower, more methodical approach to finding information (hedgehogs).

But we quickly realised that there were more than two types of web users, so the number of species in our web ecology has now multiplied to eight.

Take the test »
I was a fox what are you?!

About Jo

I'm the owner of Jo's Web, a professionally qualified graphic designer who has been involved in the industry for over 20 years. I have worked as an art editor for London publishing houses, B.B.C , Haymarket and now run Spiral Pixel Design.

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