Effects of visual cue state and type on the mobile user interface of shopping apps with 360° panoramas

With the development of modern technology, various shopping apps have emerged, and at the same time, the user interface of shopping apps is constantly being optimized to enhance users’ online shopping experience; in shopping apps, an excellent visual cue design can effectively guide users to quickly complete the process of their visual cognitive processing. The purpose of this study was to explore the usability of visual cue and presentation type in the operation of shopping apps in 360° images and to propose design suggestions for future improvements. A 2 × 3 between-subject design was planned to help explore whether different visual cue states (i.e., dynamic and static cues) and different visual cue presentation types (i.e., dot cue, gesture cue, and cartoon cue) may affect users' task performance and their subjective evaluations. The experiment adopted the purposive sampling method. A total of 60 participants were recruited to take part in the experiment. The experimental data were collected pertinent to task completion time, the system usability scale (SUS), subjective evaluation questionnaires created using a 7-point Likert scale, and semi-structured interviews. The generated results revealed that: (1) Different visual cue states may affect users' performance. (2) Different visual cue presentation types significantly affect users' task performance. Static cues improved users' task performance more than dynamic cues in the visual cue presentation type of dot or cartoon. However, the result was the opposite in the gesture condition. (3) Concerning subjective evaluations of the degree of reasonableness, acceptance, and willingness to use in the condition of the visual cue presentation, the dot or gesture cues are significantly better than the cartoon cue. (4) Among the different visual cue presentation types, participants had a greater preference for the gesture cue. (5) In terms of the degree of reasonableness, acceptance, preference and willingness to use, participants preferred the dynamic cue to the static cue in the condition of the visual cue presentation type of the dot or gesture. However, the opposite result was obtained for the cartoon visual cue presentation type. The findings generated from the research can be a good reference for the development of visual cue design for mobile shopping apps.