Integrating hedonic quality for user experience modelling

Research on user experience (UX) has attracted much attention from designers. Additionally, hedonic quality can help designers understand user interaction (such as attractive, original and innovative) when they experience a product. Realising the user's interaction state is a significant step for designers to optimise product design and service. Previous UX modelling lacks exploration in user interaction state. Also, the lack of user interaction state factor will reduce the accuracy of the UX modelling. In this paper, we explore the interaction value of online customer review and introduce a new approach to integrating hedonic quality for UX modelling. Firstly, extracting word list from online customer review; Secondly, hedonic quality words are extracted from the word list and added as a hedonic quality part to UX modelling; Thirdly, we compared the analysis result with our previous study for the conclusion. This research combines hedonic quality with UX modelling to enrich modelling in the field of UX for the first time. The proposed data collection method is superior to the traditional collection methods in hedonic quality studies. Extracting hedonic quality factors from online customer reviews can in-depth provide reflections for designers to improve their product design. Furthermore, it also explored the valuable relationship between UX and online customer reviews to provide proactive thinking in user strategy and design activitie

Prototyping Corporate User Interfaces – Towards A Visual Specification Of Interactive Systems

Corporate software development faces very demanding challenges, especially concerning the user interface of a software system. Collaborative design with stakeholders demands informal modeling methods that everybody can understand and apply. But using traditional, paper-based methods to gather and document requirements, an IT organization often experiences frustrating communication issues between the business and development teams. We present ways of agile high-fidelity prototyping for corporate user interface design. Without harming agile principles and practice, detailed prototypes can be employed for collaborative design, can act as visual specifications and substitute paper-based artifacts

Gesture-based Personal Archive Browsing in a Lean-back Environment

As personal digital archives of multimedia data become more ubiquitous, the challenge of supporting multimodal access to such archives becomes an important research topic. In this paper we present and positively evaluate a gesture-based interface to a personal media archive which operates on a living room TV using a Wiimote. We illustrate that Wiimote interaction can outperform a point-and-click interaction as reported in a user study. In addition, a set of guidelines is presented for organising and interacting with large personal media archives in the enjoyment oriented (lean-back) environment of the living room

Albert Goes Narrative Contracting

RPG’s (Role Playing Games) and improvisational theatre have some obvious similarities. Both require the participants to work together in real-time to construct dynamic narrative elements. Seeing communication in terms of ongoing narrative contracts is a well-accepted principle of improvisational theatre (Johnstone 1981). Any time a new narrative element is introduced it is seen as an offer. The respondent can either accept the offer, block it or a make counter-offer. This paper describes a study of subjects engaging in a controlled online ‘encounter’ with RPG elements. The encounter is titled ‘Albert in Africa’ and the study draws on the previously described Fun Unification Model (Newman 2004). In this study subjects’ individual predispositions, and their responses are correlated with the number of acceptances, blocks and counter-offers they make during their encounter. From this emerges a view of the complex interactions that make up the simple universal construct of fun in an RPG environment, and the identification of certain combinations of predisposition and ‘environmental affordances’ which will act as predictors to the subject’s fun response. The fun response is described in the model as the combination of enjoyment, temporal dislocation, focused immersion, innovative play and narrative engagement. Interactive entertainment must be fun for the target audience, and developers of games and RPG communities spend significant time and resources trying to increase the fun factor of their next product. It can be completely hit and miss as to whether their efforts bear fruit. To what extent can fun as a construct be meaningfully measured or is it simply too ill-defined and subjective? This study correlates the individual subjects’ predisposition for fun, their fun response to the encounter, and an analysis of each subject’s narrative contracting activity derived from the session transcripts in order to demonstrate that fun can be defined and measured with some degree of confidence. The Fun Unification Model draws on a range of previous constructs for measuring users’ experience including absorption (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974; Agarwal and Karahanna 2000), immersion (Witmer and M.J.Singer 1998), narrative engagement (McNeil 1996; Newman 2004), playfulness (Webster and Martocchio 1992), emotional useability (Logan 1994; Kim 1997), hedonic quality (Hassenzahl, Platz et al. 2000), foundational elements of experience (Marsh 2003), fun-scale rating (Read and MacFarlane 2000), and humor mechanisms (Meyer 2000). Essentially the model breaks an individual user’s experience into 3 parts; the individual’s predispositions, environmental aspects of their experience, and their responses to their experience. This can be summed up as; 1. he/she is a fun person (predisposition) 2. that’s a fun game (environment/affordances) 3. we had fun doing it (response) Into these three groupings various constructs can be inserted depending on the specifics of the activity being tested. In "Albert in Africa" the subjects are tested for engagement with elements of narrative and role-playing, so the individual predisposition to hearing and telling narrative is of interest as are the individual responses of innovative play and narrative engagement. General expectations: It was expected that, given that it was an online environment most people would be prepared to go along with some of Albert’s various outrageous claims, and that at the very least most people would be content to humour him. Those people who were found to have a significant predisposition to finding and creating narrative were expected to find ways to further the narrative elements of the encounter by making additional references to the narrative elements. The correlations between Predispositions, Responses, and their narrative contracting activity is expected to reveal the following. 1. Subjects with strong narrative tendencies are expected to experience high levels of narrative engagement and innovative play. 2. Subjects with strong narrative tendencies are expected to exhibit a higher incidence of acceptance than blocks. 3. Subjects with strong narrative creating tendencies are expected to exhibit a higher incidence of counter-offers than others. 4. Subjects with strong immersive and narrative tendencies will experience a high level of fun – defined here as the combination of enjoyment, temporal dislocation, focused immersion, innovative play and narrative engagement. The paper describes the methodology of the study, reports on the correlation of the three data inputs and discusses the results

Emotional and aesthetic attachment to digital artefacts

We report a pair of repertory grid studies that explore the attachment people have for digital and nondigitalartefacts.In the first study we found no clear distinctions between emotional attachment to digital and nondigitalartefacts: people are attached to their mobile phones in much the same way as to a childhoodteddy bear. There was also evidence that attachment and the physical availability or proximity of theartefact were associated.In the second study we examined the aesthetics of attachment to digital and non-digital artefacts.Again the proximity or availability of the artefacts appeared to be important. Items that were carriedabout or worn, such as wristwatches and laptops, were closely associated while TVs and gamesconsoles were not.In all, there does not appear to be any qualitative differences between the attachment people have fordigital and non-digital artefacts. Nor do aesthetics appear to play a part in this attachment. Howeverthe physical proximity of these artefacts is strongly associated with our (inward) feelings ofattachment to them, while we can also recognise the importance of this relationship to how we(outwardly) present ourselves to the world and others

Examining the impact of design variables and media richness on responses to product design

This study makes examines the influence of product design cues, environment congruence, and media richness on users' cognitive and affective responses to product design. These three factors were systematically manipulated in a 2x2x2 full-factorial experiment. A sample of 181 participants was used to test the study hypotheses. This study employed a between-subject design, and participants were randomly assigned to one of the eight experimental conditions. The results from statistical analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed the influence of product design cues, environment congruence, and media richness on cognitive and affective responses. The results of this study revealed that higher quality of product design and environment congruence did lead to a more positive aesthetic and affective response. In addition, the results showed a significant two-way interaction between environmental congruence and design cues for perceived aesthetic. Results however, didn't show a significant influence of design cues and environment congruence on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of-use. Moreover, it was confirmed that media richness significantly predicted the perceived ease-of-use, although no statistical significance was found for perceived aesthetic and perceived usefulness. This study has practical implications across various domains including product design, marketing and retail merchandising, and communication and media studies.Includes biblographical reference

Non-universal usability?: A survey of how usability is understood by Chinese and Danish users

ABSTRACT Most research assumes that usability is understood similarly by users in different cultures, implying that the notion of usability, its aspects, and their interrelations are constant across cultures. The present study shows that this is not the case for a sample of 412 users from China and Denmark, who differ in how they understand and prioritize different aspects of usability. Chinese users appear to be more concerned with visual appearance, satisfaction, and fun than Danish users; Danish users prioritize effectiveness, efficiency, and lack of frustration higher than Chinese users. The results suggest that culture influences perceptions of usability. We discuss implications for usability research and for usability practice

Relatório de Estágio Curricular

O presente relatório tem como intuito contextualizar teoricamente, descrever e refletir sobre os projetos realizados ao longo do estágio curricular integrante do Mestrado de Design Multimédia da Universidade da Beira Interior. Este estágio foi realizado entre fevereiro e maio de 2022 na Mosano, uma empresa de desenvolvimento de softwares, sediada em Matosinhos. Este relatório encontra-se dividido em dois capítulos que se complementam, o primeiro capítulo auxilia na compreensão da temática, enquanto o segundo capítulo, de caráter mais descritivo, consiste no estudo da usabilidade do website Diffuse.TV, projeto que se destacou dos trabalhos realizados ao longo do estágio. Neste relatório, pretendemos expor os objetivos propostos pela empresa onde realizámos o estágio como membro integrante da equipa de design. Destacam-se, ao longo do estágio, os trabalhos desenvolvidos no âmbito do design da experiência do utilizador em particular no que diz respeito aos testes de usabilidade e à avaliação do design da experiência do utilizador. O principal objetivo que nos propusemos consistiu em avaliar a experiência do utilizador do produto digital, navegando através do processo de planeamento, execução e análise constituintes desta avaliação. O uso de métodos de avaliação permitiu a persecução dos objetivos propostos, revelando-se fundamentais para a execução do projeto Diffuse. TV. Serão apresentados neste relatório os projetos desenvolvidos e os conhecimentos adquiridos, numa síntese estruturada, com foco nos conceitos teóricos e práticos de usabilidade, design da experiência do utilizador e testes com utilizadores.This report aims to describe the research process and contextualization, but also to characterize and reflect the path and projects carried out during the internship as part of the Master of Multimedia Design at the University of Beira Interior, attended between February and May 2022 at Mosano, a software development company, based in Matosinhos. This report is divided into two chapters that complement each other, the first chapter helps to understand the theme, while the second chapter, with a more descriptive character, is the study of the usability of the website Diffuse.TV, a project that stood out from the work done during the internship. In this report we intend to expose the objectives proposed by the company, where the internship was carried out as an integral member of the design team. We highlight, throughout the internship, the work developed in the field of user experience, particularly about usability and user experience tests. The main objective proposed was to evaluate the user experience of the digital product, navigating through the process of planning, execution, and analysis that make up this evaluation. The use of evaluation methods evaluation methods allowed the pursuit of the proposed objectives, proving to be fundamental for the execution of the Diffuse. TV. This report will present the developed projects and the acquired knowledge, in a structured synthesis, focusing on the theoretical and practical concepts of usability, user experience and user testing

Consumers and Augmented Reality in Shopping and Services: Drivers and Consequences

This dissertation investigated the effect of augmented reality on user experience and also the mediation effect of user experience in the relationship between augmented reality and the outcome variables including user satisfaction and user’s willingness to buy/user’s willingness to use augmented reality. Three studies were conducted in three different contexts, including buying consumer products, entertainment services and vehicle service use. The results indicate that augmented reality significantly and positively influence user experience, and user experience fully mediates the impact of augmented reality on user satisfaction and user’s willingness to buy/ user’s willingness to use augmented reality. Further, the results showed that trade-off between price and value, user’s information privacy control, perceived control and responsiveness moderate the effect of augmented reality on user experience. In addition, a new scale was developed to capture and measure the output quality in terms of image recognition generated by augmented reality. Additionally, a new aspect of user experience exclusively driven by augmented reality was developed and added to the current user experience scale