Consumer-Driven Usability Test of Mobile Application for Tea Recommendation Service

• Main Authors: Jisun Lee, Seungwoo Kang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-09-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: tea recommendation; mobile application; usability test; consumer overall acceptability
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/9/19/3961

The rapidly growing interest in healthy lifestyles and the health benefit of foods and the growing tea-consuming population are driving the growth of the tea industry. In particular, the growing preference among Millennials for premium blended tea is leading the growth of the tea market. In this paper, we study the feasibility of recommendation services for blended tea, which has not been addressed well by existing recommender systems. To this end, we design <i>TeaPick^TM,</i> a mobile application that suggests a blend of tea suited to the user&#8217;s preferences including desired health benefits. To evaluate the application and its recommendations, we conduct not only a usability test, but also a consumer acceptance test with 31 participants. Our user study shows that the participants were positive about the recommendation service provided by our application and were generally satisfied with the recommended tea.