Research on the Influence of Interface Visual Design Features of Mobile News on Cognitive Load: A Study of Elderly Users in China
PMC12837220
· 10.3390/bs16010032
Gap Declaration
Future research should integrate scanpath-based analyses to more comprehensively examine the temporal dynamics of visual search strategies in elderly users, potentially revealing nuanced differences in how older adults process complex interfaces. Additionally, while ethical approval was obtained, cultural variations in color perception (e.g., red’s significance in China) warrant cross-cultural comparisons. Future directions include comparing elderly with younger groups to delineate age-specific effects, testing additional moderators like blue fonts (as suggested in prior readability research), and developing adaptive interfaces using AI to dynamically adjust complexity based on user cognitive profiles, ultimately informing inclusive design for aging populations. This study investigates how the design of mobile news app screens affects how easy or difficult they are for older adults to use. We found that cluttered screens with a lot of information and mixed layouts make it harder for older users to find what they need, causing more mental effort and taking longer to complete tasks.
Abstract
This study addresses specific gaps in current research on user-experience interface design for news and information apps targeted at elderly users, particularly in the context of human factors and ergonomics. To investigate how interface design features of mobile news clients affect the cognitive load of elderly users, an in-depth analysis was conducted using a combination of objective eye movement tests and subjective evaluation scales. Mobile news client interfaces with systematically varied visual complexity were designed by orthogonally manipulating three core elements identified from top-ranked Chinese news apps and prior literature, and within-subject repeated experiments were performed to collect subjective cognitive load data, objective eye movement data, and behavioral data, valid…
Conclusions / Discussion
6. Conclusions This paper adopts the research method of combining objective measurement and subjective evaluation scale to study the influence mechanism of the interface design features of mobile news client on the cognitive load of elderly users, and the results verify the hypotheses of this study. In this study, the subjective evaluation value, eye-movement index value, and behavior performance index value used to measure users’ cognitive load can reflect the connotation of different interface design features. The higher the visual complexity of interface design, the greater the subjective cognitive load of elderly users, the higher the eye movement index value, and the longer the task completion time. This reflects that the elderly users need to use more cognitive effort and consume more cognitive resources when completing the interface search task with high visual complexity, and that the visual search and information processing time cost is longer. Therefore, in the interface design of mobile news clients for elderly users, the impact of the visual complexity of interface design on cognitive load of elderly users should be considered. The layout of left and right pictures or l…
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Technique originates in psychology; functional analogues in criminal justice, epidemiology literature are absent.
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