Understanding User Experience with Recommendations in Social Network Service Feed

Abstract

Today, recommendations that suggest possibly interesting contents to users using recommender systems have become a prevalent feature in various services. In the social network service (SNS) feed, one of the most active services that use recommendations, users now face the posts from the accounts that they do not follow. However, although the expected user experience with recommendations in the SNS differs from other domains due to a unique aspect of social connections, many parts of interaction with recommendations still have not been explored in the social network context. The aim of our study is to understand user experience with recommendations in the SNS feed and to explore possible design opportunities of the recommendations in the context of social interplay. Under this research goal, we conducted a qualitative survey composed of open-ended questions with 70 SNS users. The results show how SNS users interact with recommendations along with their expectations and obstacles regarding recommendations in their feed. Furthermore, we discuss implications for designing the interaction with the recommendations in the SNS feed.