General characteristics of anticipated user experience (AUX) with interactive products

Providing a positive user experience (UX) has become the key differentiator for products to win a competition in mature markets. To ensure that a product will support enjoyable experiences for its users, assessment of UX should be conducted early during the design and development process. However, most UX frameworks and evaluation techniques focus on understanding and assessing user’s experience with functional prototypes or existing products. This situation delays UX assessment until the late phases of product development which may result in costly design modifications and less desirable products. A qualitative study was conducted to investigate anticipated user experience (AUX) to address this issue. Twenty pairs of participants were asked to imagine an interactive product, draw their product concept, and anticipate their interactions and experiences with it. The data was analyzed to identify general characteristics of AUX. We found that while positive AUX was mostly related to an imagined/desired product, negative AUX was mainly associated with existing products. It was evident that the pragmatic quality of product was fundamental, and significantly influenced user’s anticipated experiences. Furthermore, the hedonic quality of product received more focus in positive than negative AUX. The results also showed that context, user profile, experiential knowledge, and anticipated emotion could be reflected in AUX. The understanding of AUX will help product designers to better foresee the users’ underlying needs and to focus on the most important aspects of their positive experiences, which in turn facilitates the designers to ensure pleasurable UX from the start of the design process

Anticipating user eXperience with a desired product: The AUX framework

Positive user experience (UX) has become a key factor in designing interactive products. It acts as a differentiator which can determine a product’s success on the mature market. However, current UX frameworks and methods do not fully support the early stages of product design and development. During these phases, assessment of UX is challenging as no actual user-product interaction can be tested. This qualitative study investigated anticipated user experience (AUX) to address this problem. Using the co-discovery method, participants were asked to imagine a desired product, anticipate experiences with it, and discuss their views with another participant. Fourteen sub-categories emerged from the data, and relationships among them were defined through co-occurrence analysis. These data formed the basis of the AUX framework which consists of two networks which elucidate 1) how users imagine a desired product and 2) how they anticipate positive experiences with that product. Through this AUX framework, important factors in the process of imagining future products and experiences were learnt, including the way in which these factors interrelate. Focusing on and exploring each component of the two networks in the framework will allow designers to obtain a deeper understanding of the required pragmatic and hedonic qualities of product, intended uses of product, user characteristics, potential contexts of experience, and anticipated emotions embedded within the experience. This understanding, in turn, will help designers to better foresee users’ underlying needs and to focus on the most important aspects of their positive experience. Therefore, the use of the AUX framework in the early stages of product development will contribute to the design for pleasurable UX

Evaluate children’s User eXperience with AttrakDiff method: USiena experience

The objective of this paper is to share the results of a pilot study conducted by the University of Siena in collaboration with the “Renato Fucini” Comprehensive Institute. The aim has been to evaluate the User eXperience of 96 children using two different educational formats, the Frontal Teaching and the Multimedia Teaching. Six between subjects experiments have been carried out. At the end of each experiment a multiple-choice questionnaire (learning level evaluation) and the AttrakDiff questionnaire (UX evaluation) have been used. On the values obtained from multiple-choice questionnaire the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test has been applied. The study results highlighted two aspects: the learning level of Multimedia Teaching format has been slightly better than Frontal Teaching format, the UX related to Multimedia Teaching format has been basically similar for all children while the own teacher presence has influenced the Frontal Teaching format UX

A longitudinal review of Mobile HCI research Methods

This paper revisits a research methods survey from 2003 and contrasts it with a survey from 2010. The motivation is to gain insight about how mobile HCI research has evolved over the last decade in terms of approaches and focus. The paper classifies 144 publications from 2009 published in 10 prominent outlets by their research methods and purpose. Comparing this to the survey for 2000-02 show that mobile HCI research has changed methodologically. From being almost exclusively driven by engineering and applied research, current mobile HCI is primarily empirically driven, involves a high number of field studies, and focus on evaluating and understanding, as well as engineering. It has also become increasingly multi-methodological, combining and diversifying methods from different disciplines. At the same time, new opportunities and challenges have emerged

Connecting Couples in Long-Distance Relationships : Towards Unconventional Computer-Mediated Emotional Communication Systems

The number of couples who find themselves in a long-distance relationship (LDR) is increasing for a wide range of reasons, such as overseas employment, academic pursuits, military duty, and similar circumstances. With the myriad of communication channels enabled by the low cost and ubiquity of computer-mediated communication technologies, couples in LDRs are able to stay in touch with each other around the globe. However, recent studies have revealed that the mainstream communication tools are inadequate to support the full spectrum of communication needed in intimate relationships. Emotional communication is one of the fundamental needs in close relationships, as it forms an important part of intimacy. This dissertation argues that there is a gap between what is known about LDR couples’ needs in research and what has been implemented for them in practice. The aim of this work is to bridge this gap by mediating emotional communication through unconventional user interfaces that use interaction solutions outside of the scope of their conventional use, with a particular focus on couples who sustain a committed LDR. Here, taking research through design as a core approach, a variety of qualitative methods were employed to seek answers to the research questions. This dissertation includes eight case studies, each of which is dedicated to answering its corresponding research question(s). Study I presents a systematic literature review which explored the current state of the art and identified the design opportunities. Study II introduces a series of co-design activities with five couples in LDRs to reveal the needs and challenges of users in an LDR. Studies III and IV propose two functional prototypes for unconventional communication systems to connect couples in LDRs. Study V showcases 12 design concepts of wearables created by the participants to support their own LDR. Study VI describes how four low-resolution prototypes created for mediating LDRs by the participants in the workshop would be used in real-world contexts. Studies VII and VIII each present a novel design tool to be used as a scaffold when designing communication systems for supporting LDRs: specifically, a conceptual design framework and a card-based design toolkit. This dissertation contributes new knowledge to the field of human-computer interaction through design interventions. It showcases a spectrum of practices which can be seen as a first step towards mediating emotional communication for couples in LDRs using unconventional communication systems. The findings comprise theoretical and empirical insights—derived from the eight case studies in which the author identified design opportunities and design considerations—relating to how couples in LDRs can be better supported by unconventional computer-mediated emotional communication systems

Viewers\u27 Involvement and Responses to an Entertainment Narrative in the Personal Television Environment

This study explored the role of involvement in narrative persuasion in the personal television environment. The entertainment overcoming resistance model (EORM) has suggested that viewers’ involvement into a narrative story or with a character overcomes their resistance toward persuasive messages because when viewers are fully engaged in a program they are not motivated to scrutinize the messages and become less critical of the messages. With the increasing popularity of personal television viewing, this dissertation sought to expand the persuasive process of entertainment-education programs in the personal television environment. Furthermore, this study expanded the EORM by suggesting moral disengagement as a moderator in the process by which involvement reduces resistance. Finally, viewers’ responses toward watching personal television and how their comfort with characteristics of personal television was associated with involvement were examined. To accomplish the research goals, 354 college students watched an episode of the crime drama BoomTown about drinking and driving via an iPad. Participants completed a survey before and after watching the episode. Results showed that personal television viewers’ identification with the main character reduced perceived invulnerability, and increased story-consistent attitudes and behavioral intentions, as suggested by the EORM. However, contrary to predictions, neither transportation nor identification were associated with counterarguing, and counterarguing was not associated with attitudes or behavioral intentions. Moral disengagement was not a significant moderator in personal television viewers’ persuasive process, but moral disengagement toward the character’s drunk driving did marginally moderate the process by which identification reduced resistance, in particular, counterarguing. A moderation analysis showed that identification with the character significantly curtailed counterarguing when moral disengagement toward the character’s drunk driving was low or moderate, whereas identification was unrelated to counterarguing when moral disengagement toward his drunk driving was high. Finally, personal television viewers’ involvement was positively associated with their degree of comfort with the screen, the viewing distance, and using headphones. Interpretations of the findings, and theoretical and practical implications for understanding the role of personal television viewers’ involvement in the process of narrative persuasion were discussed

Walking and the Social Life of Solar Charging in Rural Africa

We illustrate links between walking, sociality and using resources in a case-study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in two villages in Eastern Cape, South Africa. Like 360 million rural Sub-saharan Africans, inhabitants are poor and, like 25% and 92%, of the world respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We show that the ways we move through the world affect the meanings we embody; that certain representations obscure continuities in the practices we seek to understand and influence; and, some of the motivations of the billions of people who are marginalized in discussing sustainable HCI. Locally, about 65% of inhabitants over 14 years old own cell- phones and, over a year, we recorded 500 names of people using the Charging Stations that, we deployed within several technology probing endeavours, many on a regular basis. The detail of our longitudinal study contributes considerably to sustainable design for ‘developing’ regions. Walking is a noticeable part of charging, and all other subsistence rou- tines, and shapes inhabitants’ motivations when they use, re-purpose, store and share resources. Inhabitants are moti- vated by cost and comfort and, importantly, by performing collectivity in their tight-knit community; but, not by being green. Further, different ways of walking relate to social roles and other aspects of sociality and, we propose, shaped inhabitants’ and researchers’ perspectives on charging and using phones. We suggest this is significant for the methods and designs that we use to explore and support sustainable practices in rural Africa and, indeed, more generally

Expectations for user experience in haptic communication with mobile devices

ABSTRACT The haptic modality -the sense of touch -is utilized very limitedly in current human-computer interaction. Especially in mobile communication, the haptic modality could provide a means for richer multimodal and emotional communication between users over distance. Haptic user interface prototypes have been developed but their user experience has not been studied extensively. We conducted seven focus group sessions to study users' expectations for user experience of haptic interaction, specifically focusing on mobile communication. The paper presents the user experience factors that were regarded by potential users as salient in haptic interaction: subjective quality of the haptic stimuli, privacy, intimacy and spontaneity. Also the possibilities, restrictions and suitability of the haptic mobile communication are discussed. Most appropriate use cases for haptic communication were found to be conveying emotions and binary information. As the main conclusion, we present design guidelines for haptic mobile communication that were drawn up based on the findings

Integrating Haptic Feedback into Mobile Location Based Services

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual - text and images on the screen. Haptic feedback can be an important additional method especially in Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user’s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Transit is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. Trials elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. Results from a memory recall test show that the users of haptic feedback for navigation had better memory recall of the region traversed than the users of landmark images. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems. Enhancements to the current work could include integration of contextual information, detailed large-scale user trials and the exploration of using haptics within confined indoor spaces

The Role of User Experience in a Business-to-Business Context

As industrial companies strive to discover new ways to provide value for their customers, their focus has shifted from offering products and services to creating superior experiences for customers and users. This study focuses on the role of user experience (UX) in a business-to-business (B2B) context. The main objective is to increase the understanding of how UX is perceived and utilized in the suppliers’ and customers’ activities within a B2B context. From the suppliers’ view, the focus is on the role of UX in research and development (R&D) and also in sales and marketing (S&M). In the customer companies, the aim is to create knowledge about whether UX has an impact on technology investment decisions. In addition, a comparison is made between the users and designers of specific products considering the importance of UX-related attributes. A case study research strategy was adopted in order to better understand complex phenomena and the dynamics present within single settings. An embedded case study design included three cases, all of which consisted of one supplier company and two customer companies. As the study follows the research paradigm of pragmatism, both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to address the research questions. The results suggest that although UX was seen as an important aspect, some challenges occurred in utilizing UX-related knowledge. Although supplier companies focused on designing better experiences for the users, methods for utilizing UX in new product development (NPD) were not internalized yet in all cases and other stakeholders working outside of R&D were not actively involved in the design process. Considering UX in sales activities, it was found challenging to transfer the benefits of UX into sales argumentation or to find suitable methods for disseminating UX-related knowledge effectively for potential customers. From the customers’ point of view, UX can have an indirect impact on supplier selection as previous experiences of the supplier and their products affect decision making. The products’ market superiority and technical details, as well as the supplier company’s reliability, were considered the most important aspects in choosing a supplier. The results also suggest that R&D mostly agrees on which UX-related attributes are important for users. The results indicate that the pragmatic aspects (e.g. reliability, ease-of-use) of technological products are more important than the hedonic aspects (e.g. attractiveness, visual aesthetics). The study’s findings contribute to both prior research and managerial practices. The research provides new knowledge to the research streams of UX as well as customer value in the B2B context. First, a framework is presented in order to combine these theories and illustrate the benefits of UX for different stakeholders. The findings of the empirical part of the study contribute especially in the research on user-centered de-sign and value-based UX selling, as well as the value of UX in technology investment decisions. Based on previous studies on UX measurement, this research also offers a systematically constructed tool for measuring the importance of UX in different contexts. The study also provides practical implications for managers striving to incorporate UX into everyday practices in their company.Teollisten yritysten pyrkiessä löytämään uusia keinoja tuottaa arvoa asiakkailleen, on havaittavissa siirtymä tuotteiden ja palveluiden tarjoamisesta ylivertaisten kokemusten luomiseen asiakkaille ja tuotteiden loppukäyttäjille. Tämä tutkimus keskittyy käyttäjäkokemuksen rooliin yrityskontekstissa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on lisätä ymmärrystä siitä, miten käyttäjäkokemus koetaan ja miten sitä hyödynnetään toimittajien ja asiakkaiden toiminnoissa yrityskontekstissa. Toimittajien näkökulmasta käyttäjäkokemuksen roolia tutkitaan tuotekehityksessä sekä myynnissä ja markkinoinnissa. Asiakasyrityksissä tarkoitus on tuottaa tietoa siitä, onko käyttäjäkokemuksella vaikutusta teknologian hankintaan liittyvissä päätöksissä. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa on vertailtu tuotteiden suunnittelijoiden ja käyttäjien näkemyksiä käyttäjäkokemukseen liittyvien tekijöiden tärkeydestä. Tutkimusstrategiana käytettiin tapaustutkimusta, joka mahdollistaa monitahoisten ilmiöiden sekä sisäisen dynamiikan ymmärtämisen yksittäisissä tapauksissa. Tutkimus koostui kolmesta tapaustutkimuksesta, joista jokainen sisälsi yhden toimittajayrityksen ja kaksi asiakasyritystä. Koska tutkimus on luonteeltaan pragmaattinen, tutkimuskysymysten vastaamiseen käytettiin sekä kvalitatiivisia että kvantitatiivisia menetelmiä. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että vaikka käyttäjäkokemus koettiin tärkeänä, käyttäjäkokemukseen liittyvän tiedon hyödyntämisessä ilmeni haasteita. Vaikka toimittajat keskittyivät parempien kokemusten suunnitteluun tuotteidensa käyttäjille, menetelmiä käyttäjäkokemuksen hyödyntämiseen tuotteiden kehittämisessä ei ollut vielä sisäistetty kaikissa tapauksissa. Myöskään tuotekehityksen ulkopuoliset sidosryhmät eivät aktiivisesti osallistuneet kehitysprosessiin. Erityisesti käyttäjäkokemuksen tuomien etujen muuttaminen myyntiargumenteiksi sekä sopivien menetelmien löytäminen tiedon välittämiseksi potentiaalisille asiakkaille koettiin myyntitoiminnassa haasteelliseksi. Asiakkaiden näkökulmasta käyttäjäkokemuksella voi olla epäsuora vaikutus toimittajan valintaan, sillä aikaisemmat kokemukset toimittajasta ja heidän tuotteistaan voivat vaikuttaa investointipäätökseen. Tuotteen paremmuus markkinoilla ja sen tekniset ominaisuudet, kuten myös toimittajan luotettavuus koettiin kaikista tärkeimpinä tekijöinä toimittajaa valittaessa. Tulokset myös osoittavat, että tuotteiden kehittäjät kokevat suurimmaksi osaksi samat käyttäjäkokemukseen liittyvät tekijät tärkeinä kuin tuotteiden käyttäjät. Erityisesti pragmaattiset tekijät (esim. luotettavuus, käytön helppous) koettiin tärkeämpinä kuin hedonistiset tekijät (esim. houkuttelevuus, hyvännäköisyys). Tutkimuksen tulokset tuovat oman kontribuutionsa sekä aikaisempaan tutkimukseen että johtamiskäytäntöihin liittyen. Tutkimus tarjoaa uutta tietoa käyttäjäkokemuksen ja asiakasarvon tutkimukseen yrityskontekstissa. Ensinnäkin, teoreettinen viitekehys yhdistää edellä mainitut teoriat osoittaakseen käyttäjäkokemuksen hyödyt eri sidosryhmille. Empiirisen osuuden tulokset tuovat oman panoksensa käyttäjäkeskeisen suunnittelun ja käyttäjäkokemuksen arvopohjaisen myynnin tutkimuksiin, kuten myös käyttäjä-kokemukseen arvoon teknologian investointipäätöksissä. Aikaisempiin tutkimuksiin pohjaten tutkimus tarjoaa myös systemaattisesti rakennetun menetelmän käyttäjäkokemuksen tärkeyden mittaamiseen. Tutkimus tarjoaa myös ehdotuksia johdolle siitä, miten käyttäjäkokemusta voidaan sisällyttää yrityksen jokapäiväisiin käytäntöihin