A comparative study on user experience of four apps for renting house based on D-Lab eye-tracking experiment

Abstract: The popularity of mobile Internet and the application of big data and artificial intelligence technology have brought new development opportunities for the online rental industry. A large number of rental apps have rapidly occupied the market. Rental apps can help tenants screen and reserve housing in real time according to their needs, so users' demand for products has gradually changed from satisfying basic functional needs to providing good user experience.Objective: Because existing researches mainly focus on the construction of user experience index system of rental APP and the subjective evaluation of the user experience of APP, few scholars have conducted researches on the user experience of rental APP based on physiological experiments. Therefore, this study applied the eye-movement technology of D-lab experimental platform to conduct a comparative study on the user experience of four representative rental apps, and compared the functions, interactive process architecture and interface layout design of the four apps, providing reference value for the design of similar apps.Content: In this experiment, four representative rental apps in design are selected as experimental materials, namely Anjuke, Beike, Ziroom and Baletu. The experimental task was to ask the participants to select the matched housing resources and complete the rental on the four apps according to the given rental conditions. The whole experiment was completed based on the D-Lab experimental platform, which could record the interactive behaviors and eye movement data of participants during the experiment. After the experiment is completed, participants need to accept the interview of subjective evaluation of user experience, and the experience and existing problems of users in the process of use will be recorded as auxiliary materials for evaluation. Finally, based on interactive behavior video, eye movement data, fixation path diagram and heat map, this paper compared and analyzed the four apps from two aspects of interactive process architecture and interface layout design.Results: (1) The results of eye movement data showed that the order of average gaze count and average saccadic count was Anjuke > Baletu > Ziroom > Beike, which might be because the interface information density of Anjuke was relatively high and the layout lacked regularity, which made it difficult for users to search the target information. The layout of the interface of Ziroom and Beike is sparse, and the interest area of users is less. (2) According to the analysis of user interaction behavior, Anjuke has various functions, and users need to jump to the page several times to select the target function, which is a complicated interaction process; The interface function partition of Baletu is clear, the navigation function division is primary and secondary, and the interaction process is simple. (3) According to the analysis of the interface layout based on the heat map, it can be seen that the functional modules of Anjuke are not clearly divided and the interface layout is not easy to operate; The interface layout of Baletu adopts card design, compact layout, clear structure, and unified color style, good identification and aesthetics.

Keywords: Apps for renting house, User experience, Eye-tracking, Interactive process architecture, Interface layout design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1002919

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