The visual complexity of interface plays a crucial role in user experience. Previous studies have extensively investigated website complexity, while the visual complexity of mobile applications gets seldom attention. This study explored the effect of interface complexity of mobile news apps on user search behaviors and satisfaction by dividing visual complexity into quantity complexity and layout complexity. Thirty-four subjects were invited to take part in the task-oriented eye-tracking experiment. The results revealed that a high level of quantity complexity increased users’ revisit counts, fixation counts, and saccade counts. A high level of layout complexity increased users’ revisit counts and saccade counts while fixation counts decreased first and then increased. Additionally, user satisfaction was negatively correlated with quantity complexity levels, while there was an inverted-U shape between user satisfaction and layout complexity levels. Understanding the effect of visual complexity of mobile news apps on user search behaviors and satisfaction would contribute to providing better guidelines for designers to develop mobile news products with an appropriate complexity layout and improve user satisfaction.

界面的视觉复杂性在用户体验中起着至关重要的作用。先前的研究已经广泛研究了网站的复杂性，而移动应用程序的视觉复杂性却很少受到关注。这项研究通过将视觉复杂度划分为数量复杂度和布局复杂度，探索了移动新闻应用程序的界面复杂度对用户搜索行为和满意度的影响。邀请了34名受试者参加面向任务的眼动追踪实验。结果表明，数量上的高度复杂性增加了用户的重访次数，注视次数和扫视次数。较高的版图复杂性增加了用户的重新访问次数和扫视次数，而固定次数先减少然后增加。此外，用户满意度与数量复杂度水平呈负相关，而用户满意度和布局复杂度水平之间呈倒U形。了解移动新闻应用程序的视觉复杂性对用户搜索行为和满意度的影响，将有助于为设计人员提供更好的指南，以开发具有适当复杂性布局的移动新闻产品并提高用户满意度。