사용자 인지기능을 매개로 스마트폰 애플리케이션의 사용자환경 디자인이 애플리케이션 이용성과에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Nowadays, smartphones have become a portable multimedia computer because of a variety of useful applications in our daily lives, which can be downloaded and installed easily in smartphones. Despite of the fact that, however in the IS literature there has been little research on smartphone applications' user interface design. Specifically, there has been little understanding about smartphone users' cognitive functions as a mediating variable in the relationship between the user interface design of smartphone applications and users' work performance with the applications. Thus, the research aims of this study are to examine 1) the effects of the user interface design attributes including simplicity, consistency, and metaphor on the compliance with or the extension of users' mental models representing users' cognitive functions, and 2) the effects of the users' cognitive functions on their work performance with the applications. A survey was conducted and Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) was employed to analyze the data. The results of this study showed that two of the user interface design attributes, simplicity and consistency, strongly affected users' cognitive functions. In addition, users' cognitive functions significantly influenced users' work performance. However, there was no relationship between the metaphors in the user interfaces of smartphone applications and the compliance with users' mental model. This study contributed theoretically not only to explore users' mental models that are rarely investigated in the IS field, but also to add some findings related to users' cognitive functions to the IS literature. This study also can help practitioners to develop more user friendly user interfaces of smartphone applications by suggesting the design attributes, such as simplicity, consistency, and metaphor.