Visual Attention Quality Research for Social Media Applications: A Case Study on Photo Sharing Applications

Abstract

With the rapid growth of smart terminal industry and User-Generated Content products, Social Media Applications (SMA) products, represented by TikTok, have been booming growth. How to capture and maintain users’ attention in order to prolong their stay on the product and increase customer stickiness has become the focus of the industry. Therefore, according to the duration and characteristics of users using SMA, this paper takes the layout of SMA as an example to study the visual attention quality. Firstly, through the literature review, the study of visual attention quality in SMA was summarized into four aspects, including the span, maintenance, allocation, and switch of attention. Secondly, eye movement and behavior experiments were designed based on common content consumption tasks of SMA users to verify the hypotheses proposed in this paper. According to the results: (1) In terms of attention maintenance, linear layout outperformed masonry layout, masonry layout outperformed matrix layout, and in terms of attention span, the reverse was true; (2) In attention allocation, linear layout showed the best anti-interference characteristics; The masonry layout is suitable to be used in the task search stage and also in the dual-task execution stage; (3) In terms of attention switch, the energy cost of attention switch increased in the order of matrix layout, masonry layout and linear layout. (4) In terms of interaction, double-clicking interaction had more advantages in attention allocation and cognitive load than swiping interaction. The research in this paper has provided objective and quantitative data support for the design and operation of SMA products.

Keywords:

• Visual attention quality
• social media applications
• eye movement
• user behavior
• page layout

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part by the Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science under Grant [GD20CTS07]; in part by the 2022 Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project under Grant [22SY0105].

Notes on contributors

Xian Yang

Xian Yang is an associate professor at School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, China. His research interests include user experience, human–computer interaction.

Bin Yang

Bin Yang is a master student at School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, China. His research interests include user experience, human–computer interaction.

Chaolan Tang

Chaolan Tang is a professor at School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, China. She focuses on human–computer interaction technology to influence people, health behavior.

Xiaohong Mo

Xiaohong Mo is a PhD candidate at School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, China. Her research interests include human factors, consumer behaviour, human–computer interaction.

Bin Hu

Bin Hu is an assistant professor at Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, China. He focuses on interaction design and interactive media technology to influence people, health behavior.