Survey on user perceived system factors influencing the QoE of audiovisual calls on smartphones.

Abstract

With the widespread use of applications and services supporting audiovisual calls via smartphones, both in business and leisure contexts, a key challenge for service providers is meeting end user Quality of Experience (QoE) expectations and requirements. To successfully meet this challenge, there is a need to identify and analyze the key system-related factors impacting user perceived quality. In this paper, we contribute beyond state-of-the-art by conducting a large scale web-based questionnaire survey to investigate the system-related factors that subjects identify as most influential in contributing to their overall experience and quality perception. We focus in particular on leisure audiovisual calls, established via mobile devices. Our initial survey (Phase 1) was conducted in Feb. 2020, just prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (272 participants). To investigate if the importance of factors has changed due to increased usage of the service caused by the pandemic among the general population, we conducted a second survey (Phase 2) in October 2021 with 249 participants. Based on obtained results, we identify key system-related QoE influence factors belonging to three categories: media quality, functional support, and usability and service design. We observe no significant differences in user opinions and expectations prior to and during the period of increased service usage, despite different participant demographics and study time frames, thus contributing to generalizability of obtained results. Study results contribute to providing insights for designing future user studies investigating QoE, in terms of key factors that should be considered.