Complementary Audio-Visual Collision Warnings

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The growing number of driver assistance systems increases the demand for warnings that are intuitively comprehensible. Particularly in hazardous situations, such as a threatening collision, a driver must understand the warning immediately. For this reason, collision warnings should convey as much information as needed to interpret the situation properly and to prepare preventive actions. The present study investigated whether informing about the object and the location of an imminent crash by a multimodal warning (visual and auditory) leads to shorter reaction times and fewer collisions compared to warning signals which only inform about the object of the crash (auditory icons) or give no additional information (simple tone). Results reveal that multimodal warnings have the potential to produce a significant advantage over unimodal signals as long as their components complement each other in a way that realistically fits the situation at hand

A conceptual toolbox for designing CSCW applications

This paper presents a conceptual toolbox, developed to support the design of CSCW applications in a large Esprit project, EuroCODE. Here, several groups of designers work to investigate computer support for cooperative work in large use organizations, at the same time as they work to develop an open development platform for CSCW applications. The conceptual toolbox has been developed to support communication in and among these design groups, between designers and users and in future use of the open development platform.Rejecting the idea that one may design from a framework describing CSCW, the toolbox aims to support design by doing and help bridging between work with users, technical design, and insights gained from theoretical and empirical CSCW research

Developing and validating an English version of the meCUE questionnaire for measuring user experience

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Based on the Component model of User Experience (CUE), a standardized questionnaire (meCUE) was developed measuring key aspects of user experience (UX) for interactive products. The questionnaire consists of 34 items and covers four components: product perceptions (usefulness, usability, visual aesthetics, status, commitment), user emotions (positive, negative), consequences of usage (intention to use, product loyalty), and overall judgment. The modules were separately validated in a series of studies. Therefore, meCUE can be easily adapted to specific research goals by simply choosing those modules which are required. The original German questionnaire was translated into an English version that was validated in an online study. Fifty-eight native English speakers assessed a wide variety of interactive products, such as cell phones, digital cameras, PCs, laptops, tablets, software and mobile applications. Results show that the English version reliably assesses the key components of UX and that the internal consistency of its scales is high.DFG, GRK 1013, Prospektive Gestaltung von Mensch-Technik-Interaktion (prometei

Emotional influences on time perception

In studies on prospective time perception, a prolonging effectof arousal on time estimates is commonly reported fordurations under 2s while the effect vanishes for longerintervals. In this study, we investigated how arousal andpleasure induced by aural stimuli varying in volume andvalence influenced reproductions in the range from 1.1s to 5s.As expected, higher arousal was associated with higherestimates for 1.1s durations. However, this effect was alsofound for 3.8s durations. An additional analysis with linearmixed models revealed an interaction between volumemanipulation and subjective ratings regarding arousal andpleasure. Based on these results we propose that subjectiveexperience of the emotional quality of stimuli might beinteresting for further research on prospective timeperception. Moreover, the results showed that not only withinsubject variation should be statistically controlled whenanalyzing such data. Instead, statistical models should alsoinclude parameters controlling for stimulus material

Mental models in risk assessment: Informing people about drugs

One way to communicate about the risks of drugs is through the use of package inserts. The problems associated with this medium of informing patients have been investigated by several researchers who found that people require information about drugs they are using, including extensive risk information, and that they are willing to take this information into account in their usage of drugs. But empirical results also show that people easily misinterpret the information given. A conceptual framework is proposed that might be used for better understanding the cognitive processes involved in such a type of risk assessment and communication. It is based on the idea that people develop, through experience, a mental model of how a drug works, which effects it might produce, that contraindications have to be considered, etc. This mental model is “run” when a specific package insert has been read and a specific question arises such as, for example, whether certain symptoms can be explained as normal or whether they require special attention and action. We argue that the mental model approach offers a useful perspective for examining how people understand package inserts, and consequently for improving their content and design. The approach promises to be equally useful for other aspects of risk analysis that are dependent upon human judgment and decision making, e.g., threat diagnosis and human reliability analysis

Measuring multiple components of emotions in interactive contexts

The study of users ’ emotional behavior in HCI has been receiving increasing attention for the last few years. This paper focuses on emotions as an important part of a user’s overall experience when interacting with a system. Based on the multi-component approach to emotions proposed by Scherer [15], different aspects of emotions in an interactive context were investigated: subjective feelings, physiological activation, motor expression, cognitive appraisals, and behavioral tendencies. To induce different emotional states, two versions of an interactive system were employed which differed with respect to quality of use. The results suggest that systems of high usability lead to more positive emotions than systems with usability flaws. Differences were detected for a number of emotional components by using a variety of methods: rating scales for subjective feelings, EMG for facial muscles, heart rate, EDA, performance data and questionnaires on cognitive appraisals. We suggest that this combination provides a comprehensive basis for analyzing emotions in HCI