How mobile apps grab our attention
First empirical study on how users pay visual attention to mobile app
designs shows larger and brighter elements don't catch our eyes after all

Date:
October 6, 2020
Source:
Aalto University
Summary:
Researchers have done the first empirical study on how users pay
visual attention to mobile app designs.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As part of an international collaboration, Aalto University researchers
have shown that our common understanding of what attracts visual attention
to screens, in fact, does not transfer to mobile applications. Despite
the widespread use of mobile phones and tablets in our everyday lives,
this is the first study to empirically test how users' eyes follow
commonly used mobile app elements.


========================================================================== Previous work on what attracts visual attention, or visual saliency,
has centered on desktop and web-interfaces.

'Apps appear differently on a phone than on a desktop computer or browser: they're on a smaller screen which simply fits fewer elements and,
instead of a horizontal view, mobile devices typically use a vertical
layout. Until now it was unclear how these factors would affect how
apps actually attract our eyes,' explains Aalto University Professor
Antti Oulasvirta.

In the study, the research team used a large set of representative
mobile interfaces and eye tracking to see how users look at screenshots
of mobile apps, for both Android and Apple iOS devices.

According to previous thinking, our eyes should not only jump to bigger or brighter elements, but also stay there longer. Previous studies have also concluded that when we look at certain kinds of images, our attention is
drawn to the centre of screens and also spread horizontally across the
screen, rather than vertically. The researchers found these principles
to have little effect on mobile interfaces.

'It actually came as a surprise that bright colours didn't affect how
people fixate on app details. One possible reason is that the mobile
interface itself is full of glossy and colourful elements, so everything
on the screen can potentially catch your attention -- it's just how
they're designed. It seems that when everything is made to stand out,
nothing pops out in the end,' says lead author and Post-doctoral
Researcher Luis Leiva.

The study also confirms that some other design principles hold true for
mobile apps. Gaze, for example, drifts to the top-left corner, as an
indication of exploration or scanning. Text plays an important role,
likely due to its role in relaying information; on first use, users
thus tend to focus on text elements of a mobile app as parts of icons,
labels and logos.

Image elements drew visual attention more frequently than expected for
the area they cover, though the average length of time users spent
looking at images was similar to other app elements. Faces, too,
attracted concentrated attention, though when accompanied by text,
eyes wander much closer to the location of text.

'Various factors influence where our visual attention goes. For photos,
these factors include colour, edges, texture and motion. But when it
comes to generated visual content, such as graphical user interfaces,
design composition is a critical factor to consider,' says Dr Hamed
Tavakoli, who was also part of the Aalto University research team.

The study was completed with international collaborators including IIT
Goa (India), Yildiz Technical University (Turkey) and Huawei Technologies (China).

The team will present the findings on 6 October 2020 at MobileHCI'20,
the flagship conference on Human-Computer Interaction with mobile devices
and services.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Aalto_University. Note: Content may
be edited for style and length.


==========================================================================


Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201006091220.htm

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