Usability Research On Weather Applications Based On Eye-Tracking

The emergence of smartphones and the development of relative technologies has brought great change to people's lives.In the past,people had to wait in front of the television on time for the weather forecast,but now they can get weather information at anywhere and anytime by smartphones,which is very timely,flexible,and convenient.According to the questionnaire survey,the weather application is used frequently in daily life,but the current third-party weather application can not meet people's expectations and there is still a long way to go.By the usability research on weather applications,this paper aims to assess their usability and provide scientific improvement programs,which can help increase the market competitiveness.This paper mainly includes three parts: preliminary analysis of weather applications,traditional usability testing and the usability testing based on eye tracking.The preliminary analysis includes market analysis and questionnaire analysis,and the results provide strong support for the confirmation of usability testing's objects and tasks.The selected objects are MJ Weather,Weather Reader,and Blue Map.The traditional usability test combines scenario testing,thinking aloud and questionnaire survey.The subjects complete testing tasks on three weather applications and evaluate their availability on information layout,operation flow,element design,etc.In eye movement testing,participants complete the testing tasks on the eye movement equipment,and the eye movement data is used to evaluate the core pages' availability and finding the usability issues.The usability research methods,usability evaluation indicators and the usability designing criteria for weather applications have certain reference values for the relative research.