Swipe the Right Books : How swipe gestures can affect a book recommendation system

Abstract: The perception of a good user experience can be fundamental in an app for users to be willing to engage in it and use it more than one time. An important part of the user experience is the interactions of the used interface. In this study, the goal has been to answer the question 'How can swipe gestures be used in a book recommendation system to introduce users to new content and allow them to sample it'. To answer the question, a user study with 18 participants has been done in which prototypes based on three different swipe gestures, defined by Google, have been tested: edge swipe, overscroll collapse and paging swipe. The study is based on the previous studies 'Clicking, Assessing, Immersing, and Sharing' by Oh et al. and 'Power of the Swipe: Why Mobile Websites Should Add Horizontal Swiping to Tapping, Clicking, and Scrolling Interaction Techniques' by Dou and Sundar. The study shows that it is possible to design swipe gestures in a recommendation tool for books in such a fashion that it engages the users. The study also shows that the participants thought that the prototype with the paging swipe was statistically significantly more easy to browse and that their attention was less diverted while browsing the content of that prototype. How swipe gestures can be used in a book recommendation system for the intended purpose depends on the purpose and the context of the tool. One way to do it would be to create a tool based on the paging swipe gesture with factors such as content, attractiveness and intuitiveness of the interface in mind.