Improving Mobile News Reading Experience for Chinese Users: An User Interview and Eye Tracking Study

In recent years, mobile news apps, featuring personalized recommendation based on AI algorithm, have been widely popular among Chinese netizens. Study on the reading experience of news detail pages is the key to optimize the using experience of mobile news apps. Study I focused on critical factors that affect users’ reading experience in news detail pages, in which we invited 54 users to participate in the interview. The results show that the body text and headlines typesetting and information in the description section are the critical factors affecting users’ preference. The demands of users include a comfortable and clear body text typesetting, an eye-catching and bold headline typesetting, as well as abundant and authentic information in the description section. Based on Study I’s result, Study II, with the 4 (font size) × 5(line spacing) between-subject design, explored effects of body text typesetting on the reading experience of news detail pages, including reading fatigue, reading efficiency, along with subjective satisfaction, through eye tracking methodology together with users’ rating. Sixty participants were invited in the experiment to be grouped by font size. The TOBII X60 eye tracker was used to record the eye movements when participants were reading five articles with different line spacing. The results show that: (1) font size has a marginally significant effect on Saccade amplitude and Saccade amplitude in font 57px was significantly less than that in 51px; (2) line spacing has a significant effect on subjective overall satisfaction indicating that larger line spacing had higher overall satisfaction.