How do tactile interactions and movement orientations affect information processing of search engine results pages (SERPS) on mobile devices?

Ren, Yilin

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115442 Copy

Description

Title

How do tactile interactions and movement orientations affect information processing of search engine results pages (SERPS) on mobile devices?

Author(s)

Ren, Yilin

Issue Date

2022-04-25

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Wise, Kevin

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Wise, Kevin

Committee Member(s)

• Lleras, Alejandro
• Duff, Brittany
• Yao, Mike

Department of Study

Inst of Communications Rsch

Discipline

Communications and Media

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

mobile device, tactile interaction, information processing

Abstract

Interaction between humans and media has become increasingly tactile and mobile. Users interact with touchscreens frequently to consume information, in part because the screen size of mobile devices is much smaller than that of computers. More specifically, people scroll upward to view additional content or swipe horizontally to view the next page. There are two intersecting aspects of this phenomenon: Tactile interaction—scrolling versus swiping, and movement orientation—horizontal versus vertical. Scrolling navigates continuously displayed information—gradually replacing old with new, not unlike unrolling a traditional scroll. Swiping typically involves more discrete transitions—new information completely replaces old information, much like turning a page in a book. These simple interactions dictate virtually all of our consumption of media on mobile devices. Though some previous studies explored the effect of tactile interactions on users’ attention and memory, they failed to consider the effect of movement orientation inherent in the interactions. Two studies were conducted to explore how tactile interaction and movement orientation, in both isolation and combination, affect individuals' search performances and user experiences. Study 1 included 276 participants recruited from Amazon M-Turk and Study 2 included 172 undergraduate student participants from a large Midwestern university. All participants used their smartphone to perform a series of search tasks while using one of four possible interaction- orientation combinations: vertical scrolling, horizontal scrolling, vertical swiping, and horizontal swiping. After participants finished the search tasks, their self-reported time perception, power usage, and user satisfaction were measured. Mix-effects modelling was used to analyze both main and interaction effects of tactile interaction and movement orientation on the aforementioned dependent variables. The results showed a significant main effect of tactile interaction, in which users performed better when using scrolling interface than swiping interfaces. More specifically, while the search accuracy was the same, participants searched faster when using scrolling interface comparing with swiping interfaces. While the search time was the same, participants achieved higher search accuracy while using a scrolling interface compared to a swiping interface. The implication of this study is that it teased apart tactile interaction from movement orientation to investigate both the individual effect and interaction effect on users’ task performance and user experiences, while previous studies mixed these two factors together. In addition, it showed that the type of information (picture vs. text) might interact with different cognitive load placed by different interfaces and generate different patterns of users’ task performance data. Practically, when designers consider different tactile interactions for a visual search interface, scrolling mode might be better than swiping mode in terms of generating better search performance while achieving the same level of user satisfaction.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Yilin Ren

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