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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Emotion Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1455177
Eye Movements and User Emotional Experience: A Study in Interface Design
Provisionally accepted- School of Arts, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
The purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between eye movement metrics and user emotional experience metrics during the user's process of using the interface in a task-oriented manner through an eye-tracking study. 54 participants were recruited, who were divided into two groups and asked to complete the same task using two different sets of interfaces. The two sets of interfaces were proved to have differences in the emotional experience of users before the experiment.The participants' eye movement data were recorded as they operated, and correlation analyzes were performed using biserial correlation tests. The results show that different interface designs affect the three dimensions of user emotional experience (PAD) and also lead to changes in eye movement patterns as the users complete tasks. Interface designs that elicit higher pleasure will lead to longer duration of fixations. Interface designs that elicit higher arousal will lead to more fixations and higher peak velocity of saccades.Interface designs that elicit higher dominance will lead to longer duration of fixations, fewer fixations and fewer saccades. This study identifies eye movement metrics related to the user emotional experience in interface design that are different from those in other fields, providing a new perspective for the scientific validation of the emotional experience in interface design. The designers can apply the findings to optimize the specific interface design to improve the user's emotional experience.
Keywords: Eye-tracking1, user emotional experience2, pleasure-arousal-dominance model3, Interface Design4, cycling app5
Received: 12 Jul 2024; Accepted: 05 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yufei Jiang, School of Arts, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.