The Effects of the Floating Action Button on Quality of Experience

Abstract

Google’s Material Design, created in 2014, led to the extended application of floating action buttons (FAB) in user interfaces of web pages and mobile applications. FAB’s roll is to trigger an activity either on the present screen, or it can play out an activity that makes another screen. A few specialists in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design are sceptical regarding the usability of FAB in the interfaces of both web pages and mobile applications. They claim that the use of FAB easily distracts users and that it interferes with using other important functions of the applications, and it is unusable in applications designed for iOS systems. The aim of this paper is to investigate by an experiment the quality of experience (QoE) of a static and animated FAB and compare it to the toolbar alternative. The experimental results of different testing methods rejected the hypothesis that the usage and animation of this UI element has a positive influence on the application usability. However, its static and animated utilization enhanced the ratings of hedonic and aesthetic features of the user experience, justifying the usage of this type of button.

Keywords

• floating action button
• animation
• user interface
• quality of experience