(Not) The Sum of Its Parts: Relating Individual Video and Browsing Stimuli to Web Session QoE

The integration of web and video applications as dominant Internet content has underscored the importance of Quality of Experience (QoE) for user satisfaction, retention, and digital service success. While current research has extensively studied QoE for individual stimuli, such as web page loading or video streaming, there exists a significant gap in understanding and quantifying QoE for mixed web browsing and video streaming sessions. This paper addresses the critical need to evaluate session QoE when web and video stimuli are combined within a single web session. Employing a crowdsourcing methodology, we investigate the impact of session length, content type, and individual stimuli QoE on the overall session QoE through a full factorial design with both unimpaired and impaired stimuli. Based on these results, we evaluate the applicability of various models to accurately estimate session QoE from information about individual stimuli, offering insights into optimizing the subjective experience in web sessions.