Effects of Biophilic Design Elements and Transparency Levels on Attention and Stress in Smartphone User Interface

Abstract

Today, smartphones have become indispensable devices in daily life, yet their excessive use has significantly imposed cognitive and emotional costs on users, including impaired attention and elevated stress, making pragmatic design solutions to mitigate these effects and promoting user well-being an increasingly important topic. Biophilic design, integrating natural elements to foster human well-being, has been expected to restore attention and stress recovery. However, its application within human-computer interaction, particularly in smartphone user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design, remains largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, grounded in attention restoration theory (ART) and stress recovery theory (SRT), this study examined the effects of biophilic background images and their interaction with text container transparency levels on users’ attention and stress and their indirect effects on UX outcomes (task performance, perceived usability and enjoyment) during a task-based mobile app interaction.

A 2 (background image type: nature vs. non-nature) × 2 (text container transparency: transparency vs. non-transparency) × 3 (image replicates per background type) nested between-subjects experiment was conducted with a national sample of 433 U.S. smartphone users aged between 18 and 54, recruited via an online sampling platform. Participants were exposed to a break screen containing experimental manipulations, following two cognitive tasks intended to elevate their stress level. After the break, they completed a color-word matching test. Results indicated that background image type and text container transparency on the break screen did not significantly influence users’ attention and stress levels during the color-word matching test. Further, indirect effects of background image type and text container transparency on UX outcomes through attention and stress were also non-significant. Moreover, users’ attention and stress levels had significant influences on three UX variables, including subjective task performance, perceived usability, and perceived enjoyment. The findings of this study contribute to existing research by demonstrating no significant effects of nature background images on users’ attention and stress, therefore, paving the way for future work to better understand the role of biophilic design in smartphone UI/UX design. Given the significant role of attentional capabilities and stress levels found in this study in shaping overall UX in mobile app contexts, smartphone UI/UX designers, app developers, and marketers need to recognize the importance of users’ attention and stress in task-based mobile app design to improve the overall experience. Future research is recommended to explore ways biophilic designs may be effectively incorporated to impact smartphone users’ attention, stress, and various tasks and non-task based UX outcomes.