User Time Spent between Persuasiveness and Usability of Social Networking Mobile Applications: Patterns of Influence

Using social media is one of the most common activities for mobile users. Moreover, it is a time-consuming activity that can lead to addiction. Some gaps in HCI (Human Computer Interaction) ergonomics theory gave rise to this addiction. These gaps lie in an overexploitation of the usability and/or persuasion criteria that designers and/or developers use according to their needs when applying influence strategies to affect users' engagement. Although these strategies are widely applied in online social networks, they are not well identified and their application levels are still lacking. This paper seeks to establish and validate these influence strategies. We proposed five (05) patterns of influence in online social networks that have a significant impact on Users' Time Spent (UTS) grouping the different usability criteria and persuasion strategies. Then, we conducted a classification study of those criteria / strategies, using Hybrid Card Sort method carried out by fifteen (15) eligible experts. Experts were asked to group those criteria / strategies into a set of patterns based on our predetermined (with the option to create their own patterns). The results analysis validates our five (05) proposed patterns paving the way to outline their application borderline thereafter.