User perception of media content association in olfaction-enhanced multimedia

Olfaction is an exciting challenge facing multimedia applications. In this article we have investigated user perception of the association between olfactory media content and video media content in olfactory-enhanced multimedia. Results show that the association between scent and content has a significant impact on the user-perceived experience of olfactory-enhanced multimedia

Open Profiling of Quality: A Mixed Method Approach to Understanding Multimodal Quality Perception

To quantify the excellence of multimedia quality, subjective evaluation experiments are conducted. In these experiments, the tradition of quantitative assessment is the most dominating, but it disregards the understanding of participants' interpretations, descriptions, and the evaluation criteria of quality. The goal of this paper is to present a new multimedia quality evaluation method called Open Profiling of Quality (OPQ) as a tool for building a deeper understanding on subjective quality. OPQ is a mixed method combining a conventional quantitative psychoperceptual evaluation and qualitative descriptive quality evaluation based on the individual's own vocabulary. OPQ is targeted for naïve participants applicable to experiments with heterogeneous and multimodal stimulus material. The paper presents the theoretical basis of the development of OPQ and overviews the methods for audiovisual quality research. We present three extensive quality evaluation studies where OPQ has been used with 120 participants. Finally, we conclude further recommendations of use of the method in quality evaluation research

Acceptance Threshold: A Bidimensional Research Method for User-Oriented Quality Evaluation Studies

Subjective quality evaluation is widely used to optimize system performance as a part of end-products. It is often desirable to know whether a certain system performance is acceptable, that is, whether the system reaches the minimum level to satisfy user expectations and needs. The goal of this paper is to examine research methods for assessing overall acceptance of quality in subjective quality evaluation methods. We conducted three experiments to develop our methodology and test its validity under heterogeneous stimuli in the context of mobile television. The first experiment examined the possibilities of using a simplified continuous assessment method for assessing overall acceptability. The second experiment explored the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable quality when the stimuli had clearly detectable differences. The third experiment compared the perceived quality impacts of small differences between the stimuli close to the threshold of acceptability. On the basis of our results, we recommend using a bidimensional retrospective measure combining acceptance and satisfaction in consumer-/user-oriented quality evaluation experiments

Holistic assessment of situated cooking interactions : preliminary results of an observational study

This study presents the preliminary results of in situ observations of 2 cooking moments among 16 households. The aim of the study was to map the domestic cooking ecosystem from a user’s perspective and define which components of that environment influence the user’s cooking experience. Preliminary results show that contextual components and in particular, situations, shape cooking experiences in the domestic kitchen. Four opposite situational contexts, i.e., cooking for oneself or cooking for guests, cooking on a weekday or cooking during the weekend, cooking routine dishes or cooking dishes for the first time, and cooking alone or cooking together were distinguished. Situational context will influence temporal context, social context, physical context perceptions and information and task context of the cooking activity. These will in turn influence interactions with objects (i.e., ingredients, kitchen utensils), kitchen technology and their interfaces, content and other people present during the cooking activity. This study suggests that future kitchen technologies can match or enhance current practices only if designers and user researchers understand and define their situational context. This study goes beyond the state of the art, as this is the first study that aims to provide a holistic analysis of the current state of domestic cooking experiences using in-situ observations in order to inform design of future technologies. Implications for design are discussed