Effects of mobile news interface design features on users’ gaze behaviours and behavioural performance: evidence from China

ABSTRACT

The increasing growth in the use of mobile news apps has raised questions on how their interface design features affect users’ gaze behaviours and behavioural performance. To tackle these issues, two experiments (visual browse and search tasks) were designed to investigate the impact of interface design features (colour and layout) on users’ gaze behaviours (fixation count, fixation time ratio and first fixation duration) and behavioural performance (task completion time and search accuracy) with a portable eye tracker. Twenty-four participants were recruited to browse and search for news in different mobile news interfaces with Chinese language. The results showed that mobile news apps with white interfaces attracted more attention and participants needed more time to comprehend the information of white interfaces in the visual browse task. Furthermore, participants achieved higher search efficiency in the visual search task by using interfaces with red keyword and LT-RP (Left Text-Right Picture). In addition, it is noticeable that participants paid more attention to the text than the pictures of mobile news interfaces, and most participants first looked at text and later observed pictures. The findings provide valuable and interesting insights for better understanding users’ gaze behaviours and behavioural performance of mobile news apps.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile news apps
• interface design feature
• eye-tracking
• gaze behaviours
• behavioural performance

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71771045 and grant number 71471033) and the ‘Double First-Class’ Disciplines Construction Project of Northeastern University (grant number 02050021940101). We thank all the participants of this study for carrying out the experiment. Finally, thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71471033,71771045]; the ‘Double First-Class’ Disciplines Construction Project of Northeastern University: [Grant Number 02050021940101].