Research on the user time difference threshold during the mobile terminal app launch process

In the process of app responsiveness, launch time is a main source of users frustration. And for each launch time to be accelerated, there do exist an imperceptible interval to users. To investigate how much time delay reduction should be taken to apps that can be a meaningful improvement to mobile phone users. And answer the question about “Does a 10% or 20% average response delay reduction necessarily mean more improvement to user experience?” The constant stimulus method was used to research the specific length of app launch time difference threshold, which is also called the imperceptible interval. There were 62 participants enrolled in this study, and their subjective time perception results for two most commonly used apps with 14 different kinds of comparisons were obtained through the self-development high-fidelity models. The results show that for the WeChat™, standard stimulus was 3000ms and the difference threshold was [2646.81, 3384.01] ms. And the relative difference threshold was 12.29%. For the address book, standard stimulus was 1200ms and the imperceptible interval was [987.59, 1409.29] ms. And the relative difference threshold was 17.57%. The results indicated that with the decrease of the standard stimulus, the relative difference threshold also declined without considering the app difference. The findings of this study are feasible and worthy of the manufactures to ameliorate the user experience of mobile phones apps combined with the imperceptible interval.