Effects of Prior Experience on the User Experience of News Aggregation App’s Features—Evidence from a Behavioral Experiment

Abstract

News aggregator apps have become one of the major channels for acquiring information for the Chinese. The number of users is increasing but literature on the user experience (UX) of these apps from the perspective of human-computer interaction remains dearth. In study 1, a completely randomized between-participant experiment with prior experience of news aggregator apps (with prior experience vs. without prior experience) as the independent variable was conducted to investigate its effects on the UX of news aggregator app’s functions, including browsing news, searching news, watching short videos, interacting with news, personalized page setup and online shopping. UX was operationalized as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and satisfaction. Results indicated that the experienced users perceived lower levels of usefulness when they used the app to browse news, watch short videos, interact with news and set up the page than inexperienced users. Experienced users also perceived lower levels of ease of use when watching short videos. In addition, veteran users reported lower satisfaction levels when browsing the news. To explore the reason behind this phenomenon, a sentiment analysis (study 2) was conducted on the reports submitted by participants in the experienced group during the training sessions. It was found that the experienced group overall reported negative sentiment scores, and the results indicated positive trends of correlation between the sentiment score and the UX. The current research provides a more nuanced understanding of the effect of prior experience on the UX of news aggregator apps.