Influence of internet experience on the judgment of mobile web design: a case study of West Africa

Abstract

Human-computer interaction (HCI) systems are more likely to be successful if tailored to different user groups. However, in Africa, research on how internet experience (IE) and web design (WD) influence the perception of mobile websites is scarce. To bridge this gap, we conducted an empirical study among 191 participants from West Africa to investigate the influence of IE and WD on users' perception of mobile websites and preferences. We based our study on four different mobile website designs in the tourism domain as a case study. The results of our analysis show that IE negatively influences the perception of aesthetics and credibility, with high-experience (HE) users being more critical of mobile websites than low-experience (LE) users overall. More specifically, LE users prefer highly colorful website design to minimalist website design. In contrast, HE users prefer minimalist website design to highly colorful website design. Moreover, both user groups prefer grid-style mobile website design to list-style mobile website design. These findings can be leveraged by HCI designers to tailor mobile websites to both user groups in West Africa.