The Predictable Experience of News: How User Interface, Context and Content Interplay to form the User Experience

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the components content, context and user interface interplay to form the user experience of news consumption on a smartphone. Further, it explores the possibility of inducing contexts to participants in user studies by introducing relevant context characteristics. The thesis is conducted in cooperation with the company Humblebee, that has extensive knowledge of how to apply user experience design in practice. The thesis consists of three studies (Study I, Study II and Study III). Study I consists of a diary study, an online survey and research of existing literature on the topics of both user experience and news consumption. In Study II, two news feeds and four different versions of the user interface are created based on the findings in Study I. Additionally, two contexts are found to be common situations in which news is consumed. Lastly, several relevant UX aspects are determined. User tests are conducted where participants read a specific news feed, using a specific user interface while conducting different tasks that aim to induce contexts to the participants. After the test, the participants rate their experience in a self-assessment questionnaire which is elaborated on in a follow up interview. Study III consists of additional user tests aimed to validate the results from Study II and to further investigate the relationship between the content, the context and the user interface. The results show that a specific user experience can be predicted if different parts of content, context and user interface are known. They also show that it is possible to induce contexts in user studies by introducing relevant context characteristics.