Proposed features of an online examination interface design and its optimal values

User Interface Design is an essential part of any software application. Accordingly, online examination is an equally important system within eLearning. Consequently, online examination design features are a significant factor in enhancing exam efficiency as well as convenience for examinees. Nine main design features are generally applied in the online exam, namely font (i.e., type, size, colour, and style), background colour, sound alert, questions group, time counters, and number of questions per page. The values of these features are closely related to user characteristics, whether relating to the physical, cognitive, psychomotor, demographics or experience. Our experiment was conducted on 119 students to identify the commonly preferred online examination design. The results show that the students had variations in their choice of online exam interface design, where students preferred to group questions by Topic and then by Type. The most popular font type was Arial with a size of 14 or 12 and using regular font style. Moreover, white background and black text were the most preferred. Most of the students selected 5 and 3 questions/page respectively. Countdown Timer was the most preferred time counter. Regarding sound alert, the 15 and 5 min remains were the most selected by students.