Empirical investigation of how user experience is affected by response time in a web application.

Abstract

User experience (UX) is the user’s perceptions of a system or service, as well as the behavioural and emotional responses from usage or anticipated use of a system or service. Furthermore, UX is multidimensional in its nature, and it is influenced by the system of use, the context in which the system is used, and the user’s internal state. UX is divided into four main dimensions, namely pragmatic, hedonic, appealingness, and emotions, where pragmatic is considered the perceived usability by the user, and hedonic represents the attributes that create stimulation and identification for the user. Moreover, appealingness is the user’s overall judgement of the system, meanwhile emotions are the outcomes from usage of a system. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact that response time, which is an attribute of the system component, of a web application, has on the user experience attributes; pragmatic, hedonic, appealingness and emotions. This study was carried out by first executing a literature review that covers important literature in the field of user experience. Second, designing and executing an online- based experiment, which involved two identical web applications, where the only difference was one second in response time. In total, 100 participants attended the experiment, of which 50 participants were assigned to the fast version, and the other 50 were assigned to the slow version of the web application. The experiment was conducted within 20 days. The results of statistical analysis, which was performed on the experiment data, revealed that there was no significant impact that response time has on user experience. Several factors have been identified that possibly had a negative impact on the experiment. However, the results of this study can be used to continue with further research on user experience in relation to response time of web applications.