Research on the Neural Mechanism of Subconscious Evaluation of Mobile Interfaces in Smart Apps

Abstract

Following the development of mobile internet and smart devices, designing smart product interfaces is positively significant to enhance user experience and improving the quality of life. Users automatically produce implicit evaluations when they encounter or use the interfaces of smart devices. However, what happens in our brain after receiving the visual information? How do we process visual information? How do the interface design features affect the subconscious evaluation process? To answer these questions, the current study aims to investigate the neural mechanism of users’ subconscious evaluation process of mobile interfaces in smart apps by using event-related potentials (ERPs) technology. ERPs results showed that P1, N1, and N2 can reflect participants’ subconscious evaluation of mobile interfaces in smart apps. In conclusion, participants could evaluate the more obvious layout feature but ignore the less obvious color feature of mobile news app interfaces automatically. Moreover, both the right-hemisphere and valence hypotheses were observed in the current study. These findings enrich the design of mobile interfaces and user cognition theory. Besides, the present study established a feasible technological method for the acquisition of users’ implicit needs and provides a data foundation for smart service. In addition, it can help app designers to identify users’ implicit needs and compare the alternative prototype in the development stage of mobile interfaces.