A comparative study on user experience of four apps for renting house
based on D-Lab eye-tracking experiment
Authors: Huang Ran , zhu Yanfei , Xue ChengQi 
Published: February 2023

The popularity of mobile Internet and the application of big data and
artificial intelligence technology have brought new development
opportunities for the online rental industry. A large number of rental apps
have rapidly occupied the market. Rental apps can help tenants screen and
reserve housing in real time according to their needs, so users' demand for
products has gradually changed from satisfying basic functional needs to
providing good user experience.Objective: Because existing researches mainly
focus on the construction of user experience index system of rental APP and
the subjective evaluation of the user experience of APP, few scholars have
conducted researches on the user experience of rental APP based on
physiological experiments. Therefore, this study applied the eye-movement
technology of D-lab experimental platform to conduct a comparative study on
the user experience of four representative rental apps, and compared the
functions, interactive process architecture and interface layout design of
the four apps, providing reference value for the design of similar
apps.Content: In this experiment, four representative rental apps in design
are selected as experimental materials, namely Anjuke, Beike, Ziroom and
Baletu. The experimental task was to ask the participants to select the
matched housing resources and complete the rental on the four apps according
to the given rental conditions. The whole experiment was completed based on
the D-Lab experimental platform, which could record the interactive
behaviors and eye movement data of participants during the experiment. After
the experiment is completed, participants need to accept the interview of
subjective evaluation of user experience, and the experience and existing
problems of users in the process of use will be recorded as auxiliary
materials for evaluation. Finally, based on interactive behavior video, eye
movement data, fixation path diagram and heat map, this paper compared and
analyzed the four apps from two aspects of interactive process architecture
and interface layout design.Results: (1) The results of eye movement data
showed that the order of average gaze count and average saccadic count was
Anjuke > Baletu > Ziroom > Beike, which might be because the
interface information density of Anjuke was relatively high and the layout
lacked regularity, which made it difficult for users to search the target
information. The layout of the interface of Ziroom and Beike is sparse, and
the interest area of users is less. (2) According to the analysis of user
interaction behavior, Anjuke has various functions, and users need to jump
to the page several times to select the target function, which is a
complicated interaction process; The interface function partition of Baletu
is clear, the navigation function division is primary and secondary, and the
interaction process is simple. (3) According to the analysis of the
interface layout based on the heat map, it can be seen that the functional
modules of Anjuke are not clearly divided and the interface layout is not
easy to operate; The interface layout of Baletu adopts card design, compact
layout, clear structure, and unified color style, good identification and
aesthetics.