Evaluation of an Improved Visualization System for Helping Children Identify Risky Websites

A prototype visualization system for helping children assess website features and use them to identify risky websites has been improved and evaluated. It uses a graphical search interface called eConcentric Ring View,´ which was developed to support flexible retrieval of multi-faceted metadata. Eleven website attributes were defined: action, color, atmosphere, layout, average page length, total number of images, total number of links, total number of pages, font most often used, average font size, and total number of letters. Testing using actual and dummy websites showed that the risk level of each actual website corresponded to the type of portal site through which it was accessed and that websites with different risk levels had several different distinguishing characteristics.