Showing papers on "User experience design published in 2012"
Book•
16 Mar 2012
TL;DR: This book provides practical guidance on solving usability testing problems with statistics for any project, including those using Six Sigma practices, along with easy-to-use excel formulas and web-calculators for analyzing data.
Abstract: You're being asked to quantify usability improvements with statistics. But even with a background in statistics, you are hesitant to statistically analyze the data, as you may be unsure about which statistical tests to use and have trouble defending the use of the small test sample sizes associated with usability studies.
The book is about providing a practical guide on how to use statistics to solve common quantitative problems arising in user research. It addresses common questions?you face every day?such as: Is the current product more usable than our competition? Can we be sure at least 70% of users can complete the task on the 1st attempt? How long will it take users to purchase products on the website??This book shows you which test to use, and how provide a foundation for both the statistical theory and best practices in applying them. The authors draw on decades of statistical literature from Human Factors, Industrial Engineering and Psychology, as well as their own published research to provide the best solutions. They provide both concrete solutions (excel formula, links to their own web-calculators) along with an engaging discussion about the statistical reasons for why the tests work, and how to effectively communicate the results.
Provides practical guidance on solving usability testing problems with statistics for any project, including those using Six Sigma practices
Show practitioners which test to use, why they work, best practices in application, along with easy-to-use excel formulas and web-calculators for analyzing data
Recommends ways for practitioners to communicate results to stakeholders in plain English
Table of Contents
Dedication Acknowledgements About the Authors Chapter 1: Introduction and How to Use This Book Chapter 2: Quantifying User Research Chapter 3: How Precise Are Our Estimates? Confidence Intervals Chapter 4: Did We Meet or Exceed Our Goal? Chapter 5: Is There a Statistical Difference between Designs? Chapter 6: What Sample Sizes Do We Need? Part 1: Summative Studies Chapter 7: What Sample Sizes Do We Need? Part 2: Formative Studies Chapter 8: Standard Usability Questionnaires Chapter 9: Six Enduring Controversies in Measurement and Statistics Chapter 10: Wrapping Up Appendix Index
1,198 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that evaluating the user experience of a recommender requires a broader set of measures than have been commonly used, and additional measures that have proven effective are suggested.
Abstract: Since their introduction in the early 1990's, automated recommender systems have revolutionized the marketing and delivery of commerce and content by providing personalized recommendations and predictions over a variety of large and complex product offerings. In this article, we review the key advances in collaborative filtering recommender systems, focusing on the evolution from research concentrated purely on algorithms to research concentrated on the rich set of questions around the user experience with the recommender. We show through examples that the embedding of the algorithm in the user experience dramatically affects the value to the user of the recommender. We argue that evaluating the user experience of a recommender requires a broader set of measures than have been commonly used, and suggest additional measures that have proven effective. Based on our analysis of the state of the field, we identify the most important open research problems, and outline key challenges slowing the advance of the state of the art, and in some cases limiting the relevance of research to real-world applications.
873 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposes a framework that takes a user-centric approach to recommender system evaluation that links objective system aspects to objective user behavior through a series of perceptual and evaluative constructs (called subjective system aspects and experience, respectively).
Abstract: Research on recommender systems typically focuses on the accuracy of prediction algorithms. Because accuracy only partially constitutes the user experience of a recommender system, this paper proposes a framework that takes a user-centric approach to recommender system evaluation. The framework links objective system aspects to objective user behavior through a series of perceptual and evaluative constructs (called subjective system aspects and experience, respectively). Furthermore, it incorporates the influence of personal and situational characteristics on the user experience. This paper reviews how current literature maps to the framework and identifies several gaps in existing work. Consequently, the framework is validated with four field trials and two controlled experiments and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results of these studies show that subjective system aspects and experience variables are invaluable in explaining why and how the user experience of recommender systems comes about. In all studies we observe that perceptions of recommendation quality and/or variety are important mediators in predicting the effects of objective system aspects on the three components of user experience: process (e.g. perceived effort, difficulty), system (e.g. perceived system effectiveness) and outcome (e.g. choice satisfaction). Furthermore, we find that these subjective aspects have strong and sometimes interesting behavioral correlates (e.g. reduced browsing indicates higher system effectiveness). They also show several tradeoffs between system aspects and personal and situational characteristics (e.g. the amount of preference feedback users provide is a tradeoff between perceived system usefulness and privacy concerns). These results, as well as the validated framework itself, provide a platform for future research on the user-centric evaluation of recommender systems.
800 citations
TL;DR: This article studies direct communications between user equipments in the LTE-advanced cellular networks to provide better user experience and make profit accordingly.
Abstract: This article studies direct communications between user equipments in the LTE-advanced cellular networks. Different from traditional device-to-device communication technologies such as Bluetooth and WiFi-direct, the operator controls the communication process to provide better user experience and make profit accordingly. The related usage cases and business models are analyzed. Some technical considerations are discussed, and a resource allocation and data transmission procedure is provided.
764 citations
Book•
25 Jan 2012
TL;DR: The authors will guide you through the UX lifecycle process, including contextual inquiry and analysis, requirements extraction, design ideation and creation, practical design production, prototyping, and UX evaluation.
Abstract: This is a comprehensive textbook on designing interaction to ensure a quality user experience. Combining breadth, depth, and practical applications, this book takes a time-tested process-and-guidelines approach that provides readers with actionable methods and techniques while retaining a firm grounding in HCI concepts and theory. The authors will guide you through the UX lifecycle process, including contextual inquiry and analysis, requirements extraction, design ideation and creation, practical design production, prototyping, and UX evaluation. Development activities are linked via handoffs between stages as practitioners move through the process. The lifecycle template concept introduced in this book can be tailored to any project environment, from large enterprise system development to commercial products. Students and practitioners alike will come away with knowledge and understanding of how to create and refine interaction designs to ensure a quality user experience. For more information see theuxbook.com*A very broad approach to user experience through its components-usability, usefulness, and emotional impact with special attention to lightweight methods such as rapid UX evaluation techniques and an agile UX development process *Universal applicability of processes, principles, and guidelines-not just for GUIs and the Web, but for all kinds of interaction and devices: embodied interaction, mobile devices, ATMs, refrigerators, and elevator controls, and even highway signage *Extensive design guidelines applied in the context of the various kinds of affordances necessary to support all aspects of interaction *Real-world stories and contributions from accomplished UX practitioners *A practical guide to best practices and established principles in UX *Alifecycle template that can be instantiated and tailored to a given project, for a given type of system development, on a given budget.
755 citations
TL;DR: The current practices in the information visualization research community are encapsulated and a different approach is provided to reaching decisions about what might be the most effective evaluation of a given information visualization.
Abstract: We take a new, scenario-based look at evaluation in information visualization. Our seven scenarios, evaluating visual data analysis and reasoning, evaluating user performance, evaluating user experience, evaluating environments and work practices, evaluating communication through visualization, evaluating visualization algorithms, and evaluating collaborative data analysis were derived through an extensive literature review of over 800 visualization publications. These scenarios distinguish different study goals and types of research questions and are illustrated through example studies. Through this broad survey and the distillation of these scenarios, we make two contributions. One, we encapsulate the current practices in the information visualization research community and, two, we provide a different approach to reaching decisions about what might be the most effective evaluation of a given information visualization. Scenarios can be used to choose appropriate research questions and goals and the provided examples can be consulted for guidance on how to design one's own study.
700 citations
19 Jul 2012
TL;DR: This chapter introduces the five Planes of User Experience, and discusses the role of interface design, navigation design, information architecture, and strategy in the development of user experience.
509 citations
5 May 2012
TL;DR: A sample of existing work on shape-changing interfaces is reviewed to address shortcomings and identify eight types of shape that are transformed in various ways to serve both functional and hedonic design purposes.
Abstract: Shape change is increasingly used in physical user interfaces, both as input and output. Yet, the progress made and the key research questions for shape-changing interfaces are rarely analyzed systematically. We review a sample of existing work on shape-changing interfaces to address these shortcomings. We identify eight types of shape that are transformed in various ways to serve both functional and hedonic design purposes. Interaction with shape-changing interfaces is simple and rarely merges input and output. Three questions are discussed based on the review: (a) which design purposes may shape-changing interfaces be used for, (b) which parts of the design space are not well understood, and (c) why studying user experience with shape-changing interfaces is important.
455 citations
TL;DR: This paper surveys the state of the art of user experience research in RS by examining how researchers have evaluated design methods that augment RS’s ability to help users find the information or product that they truly prefer, interact with ease with the system, and form trust with RS through system transparency, control and privacy preserving mechanisms.
Abstract: A recommender system is a Web technology that proactively suggests items of interest to users based on their objective behavior or explicitly stated preferences. Evaluations of recommender systems (RS) have traditionally focused on the performance of algorithms. However, many researchers have recently started investigating system effectiveness and evaluation criteria from users' perspectives. In this paper, we survey the state of the art of user experience research in RS by examining how researchers have evaluated design methods that augment RS's ability to help users find the information or product that they truly prefer, interact with ease with the system, and form trust with RS through system transparency, control and privacy preserving mechanisms finally, we examine how these system design features influence users' adoption of the technology. We summarize existing work concerning three crucial interaction activities between the user and the system: the initial preference elicitation process, the preference refinement process, and the presentation of the system's recommendation results. Additionally, we will also cover recent evaluation frameworks that measure a recommender system's overall perceptive qualities and how these qualities influence users' behavioral intentions. The key results are summarized in a set of design guidelines that can provide useful suggestions to scholars and practitioners concerning the design and development of effective recommender systems. The survey also lays groundwork for researchers to pursue future topics that have not been covered by existing methods.
398 citations
TL;DR: The results of the study indicate that both display and interaction fidelity significantly affect strategy and performance, as well as subjective judgments of presence, engagement, and usability.
Abstract: In recent years, consumers have witnessed a technological revolution that has delivered more-realistic experiences in their own homes through high-definition, stereoscopic televisions and natural, gesture-based video game consoles. Although these experiences are more realistic, offering higher levels of fidelity, it is not clear how the increased display and interaction aspects of fidelity impact the user experience. Since immersive virtual reality (VR) allows us to achieve very high levels of fidelity, we designed and conducted a study that used a six-sided CAVE to evaluate display fidelity and interaction fidelity independently, at extremely high and low levels, for a VR first-person shooter (FPS) game. Our goal was to gain a better understanding of the effects of fidelity on the user in a complex, performance-intensive context. The results of our study indicate that both display and interaction fidelity significantly affect strategy and performance, as well as subjective judgments of presence, engagement, and usability. In particular, performance results were strongly in favor of two conditions: low-display, low-interaction fidelity (representative of traditional FPS games) and high-display, high-interaction fidelity (similar to the real world).
377 citations
22 Aug 2012
TL;DR: An energy emulation tool that allows developers to estimate the energy use for their mobile apps on their development workstation itself and scale the emulated resources including the processing speed and network characteristics to match the app behavior to that on a real mobile device.
Abstract: Battery life is a critical performance and user experience metric on mobile devices. However, it is difficult for app developers to measure the energy used by their apps, and to explore how energy use might change with conditions that vary outside of the developer's control such as network congestion, choice of mobile operator, and user settings for screen brightness. We present an energy emulation tool that allows developers to estimate the energy use for their mobile apps on their development workstation itself. The proposed techniques scale the emulated resources including the processing speed and network characteristics to match the app behavior to that on a real mobile device. We also enable exploring multiple operating conditions that the developers cannot easily reproduce in their lab. The estimation of energy relies on power models for various components, and we also add new power models for components not modeled in prior works such as AMOLED displays. We also present a prototype implementation of this tool and evaluate it through comparisons with real device energy measurements.
TL;DR: The results indicate that the user's affective experience with the usability of the shop might serve as a mediator variable within the aesthetics-usability relation: the frustration of poor usability lowers ratings on perceived aesthetics.
TL;DR: An important class of datacenter applications, called Online Data-Intensive (OLDI) applications, includes Web search, online retail, and advertisement, and to achieve good user experience, OLDI applica...
Abstract: An important class of datacenter applications, called Online Data-Intensive (OLDI) applications, includes Web search, online retail, and advertisement. To achieve good user experience, OLDI applica...
TL;DR: This article analyzes the privacy risks associated with several current and prominent personalization trends, namely social-based personalization, behavioral profiling, and location-basedpersonalization, and surveys user attitudes towards privacy and personalization.
Abstract: Personalization technologies offer powerful tools for enhancing the user experience in a wide variety of systems, but at the same time raise new privacy concerns. For example, systems that personalize advertisements according to the physical location of the user or according to the user's friends' search history, introduce new privacy risks that may discourage wide adoption of personalization technologies. This article analyzes the privacy risks associated with several current and prominent personalization trends, namely social-based personalization, behavioral profiling, and location-based personalization. We survey user attitudes towards privacy and personalization, as well as technologies that can help reduce privacy risks. We conclude with a discussion that frames risks and technical solutions in the intersection between personalization and privacy, as well as areas for further investigation. This frameworks can help designers and researchers to contextualize privacy challenges of solutions when designing personalization systems.
14 Oct 2012
TL;DR: It is illustrated empirically that with only a few iterations of interaction and optimization, a user can achieve a scatterplot view and its corresponding distance function that reflect the user's knowledge of the data.
Abstract: The world's corpora of data grow in size and complexity every day, making it increasingly difficult for experts to make sense out of their data. Although machine learning offers algorithms for finding patterns in data automatically, they often require algorithm-specific parameters, such as an appropriate distance function, which are outside the purview of a domain expert. We present a system that allows an expert to interact directly with a visual representation of the data to define an appropriate distance function, thus avoiding direct manipulation of obtuse model parameters. Adopting an iterative approach, our system first assumes a uniformly weighted Euclidean distance function and projects the data into a two-dimensional scatterplot view. The user can then move incorrectly-positioned data points to locations that reflect his or her understanding of the similarity of those data points relative to the other data points. Based on this input, the system performs an optimization to learn a new distance function and then re-projects the data to redraw the scatter-plot. We illustrate empirically that with only a few iterations of interaction and optimization, a user can achieve a scatterplot view and its corresponding distance function that reflect the user's knowledge of the data. In addition, we evaluate our system to assess scalability in data size and data dimension, and show that our system is computationally efficient and can provide an interactive or near-interactive user experience.
Book•
1 Jan 2012TL;DR: The essential how-to-sketch workbook from design guru Bill Buxton, author of the Sketching User Experiences, features easy, cost-effective, and fun step-by-step 4-color exercises for a variety of design projects.
Abstract: Bill Buxton revolutionized the way people approach design in Morgan Kafumann's Sketching User Experiences. The book was endorsed by Bill Gates, named the best innovation book of 2007 by Strategy+Business, and has sold over 18,000 and is still gaining momentum.Design sketching is much like what it sounds like: putting pencil to paper as a first step to design of any interactive technology -- website, software application, or mobile devices. Buxton's book gives the compelling argument as to why sketching is an integral part of the design process, and then provides a series of methodologies for practitioners, researchers, and students. Buxton is now back with a how-to-sketch workbook that applies the methodologies in his book in a simple, straight forward manner. The book can be used as a complement to any book on UX design. It is designed for a 12 week course, but the exercises can be used as stand-alone modules for trainings and for practitioners who want to hone their skills. Its low price ensures it will not compete with, but will complement related texts. This is a unique contribution to the field by one of the most well known names in the field. *The essential how-to-sketch workbook from design guru Bill Buxton, author of the Sketching User Experiences*Features easy, cost-effective, and fun step-by-step 4-color exercises for a variety of design projects*Perfect complement to Buxton's Sketching User Experience or in a classroom alongside any user experience text. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
5 May 2012
TL;DR: This paper is the first study of how experienced user-centered design practitioners with prior experience deploying personas, use and perceive personas in industrial software design, and identifies limits to the persona approach in the context studied.
Abstract: Personas are a critical method for orienting design and development teams to user experience. Prior work has noted challenges in justifying them to developers. In contrast, it has been assumed that designers and user experience professionals - whose goal is to focus designs on targeted users - will readily exploit personas. This paper examines that assumption. We present the first study of how experienced user-centered design (UCD) practitioners with prior experience deploying personas, use and perceive personas in industrial software design. We identify limits to the persona approach in the context studied. Practitioners used personas almost exclusively for communication, but not for design. Participants identified four problems with personas, finding them abstract, impersonal, misleading and distracting. Our findings argue for a new approach to persona deployment and construction. Personas cannot replace immersion in actual user data. And rather than focusing on creating engaging personas, it is critical to avoid persona attributes that mislead or distract.
TL;DR: A cross-sectional method to look at the effects of user profiles on ratings for commercial products that use one such instrument, the System Usability Scale or SUS found results that were quite close to early assessment studies: Users having a more extensive experience with a product tended to provide higher, more favorable, SUS scores over users with either no or limited experience withA product.
Abstract: Longitudinal studies have to do with testing over time and thus take into consideration previous user experience with a product or product versions. However, it is difficult to conduct these types of studies. Therefore the literature is sparse on examples of the explicit effect of user experience on user satisfaction metrics in industry-standard survey instruments. During a development experience in 2009, we used a cross-sectional method to look at the effects of user profiles on ratings for commercial products that use one such instrument, the System Usability Scale or SUS.
Recent research has reported finding that differences in user ratings could be based on the extent of a user's prior experience with the computer system, a Web site being visited or a desktop application like Microsoft's Office suite being used. Compared to off-the-shelf office products or personal Web applications, we were curious if we would find the same experience effect for domain specialists using geosciences products in the course of their daily professional job roles. In fact, from data collected with 262 end users across different geographic locations testing two related oilfield product releases, one Web-based and one desktop-based, we found results that were quite close to early assessment studies: Users having a more extensive experience with a product tended to provide higher, more favorable, SUS scores over users with either no or limited experience with a product---and by as much as 15-16%, regardless of the domain product type. This and other observations found during our product testing have led us to offer some practical how-to's to our internal product analysts responsible for managing product test cycles, administering instruments like the SUS to users, and reporting results to development teams.
1 Jan 2012
TL;DR: Durch die immer starkere Verbreitung des Internets and die zunehmende Globalisierung ist der Wettbewerb internationaler geworden.
Abstract: In den letzten Jahren hat sich in der Entwicklung von Softwareprodukten einiges verandert. Durch die immer starkere Verbreitung des Internets und die zunehmende Globalisierung ist der Wettbewerb internationaler geworden.
TL;DR: A framework for the analysis and evaluation of the User eXperience in interactive entertainment systems and a system to represent UX based on this framework is presented, with the aim of ensuring and measuring a satisfactory experience of the entertainment system.
Abstract: Currently, few studies focus on analysing the degree of the Player eXperience PX in video games. Video games have now become interactive entertainment systems with a high economic impact on society; these are interactive systems characterised by their subjectivity, which differ from other systems in that their main objective is to entertain and amuse the user player. This work discusses the analysis and evaluation of the User eXperience UX in interactive entertainment systems, exploring how usability, given its definition, objectives and the fact it is one of the main dimensions of UX, is not sufficient to characterise the PX, giving rise to a new concept: Playability. In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis and evaluation of the UX in video games. The results show the need and importance of a framework to help us understand and measure the experience that players feel using these types of interactive systems, in order to improve the experience during play time. The proposed framework characterises the experience using attributes to identify and properties to measure UX. It thus provides a multifaceted analysis mechanism to assess the impact of the gaming experience and its relationship with the elements of a video game. We therefore present a system to represent UX based on this framework, with the aim of ensuring and measuring a satisfactory experience of the entertainment system. Finally, we discuss a practical experiment in which an evaluation of the playability of a commercial video game was carried out using the methods proposed in this work.
1 Jun 2012
TL;DR: An integrated model of IT acceptance is developed that revisits the technology acceptance model (TAM) and compares the role of attitude, use, and compatibility as measures of IT accepted and applies it to the adoption of a clinical management system for hospital workers and finds strong support.
Abstract: We develop and test an integrated model of IT acceptance that revisits the technology acceptance model (TAM) and compares the role of attitude, use, and compatibility as measures of IT acceptance. A pair of second-order constructs define perceived usefulness in terms of information quality (accuracy, content, format, and timeliness), while perceived ease of use is defined in terms of factors that enable the user to make use of the system (specifically, computing support and user efficacy). Using PLS, we apply the model to the adoption of a clinical management system for hospital workers and find strong support. By assessing levels of user experience we find enabling factors drive a users' initial understanding of the system, while more experienced users focus on usefulness and compatibility. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.
01 Jul 2012-International Journal of Human-computer Studies \/ International Journal of Man-machine Studies
TL;DR: A four-dimension evaluation framework was developed and applied to an empirical study with a DEG on teaching geography, adopting Engestrom's (1987) extended framework of Activity Theory (AT) that provides contextual information essential for understanding contradictions and breakdowns observed in the interactions between the game players.
Abstract: Adaptive digital educational games (DEGs) providing players with relevant interventions can enhance gameplay experience. This advance in game design, however, renders the user experience (UX) evaluation of DEGs even more challenging. To tackle this challenge, we developed a four-dimension evaluation framework (i.e., gaming experience, learning experience, adaptivity, and usability) and applied it to an empirical study with a DEG on teaching geography. Mixed-method approaches were adopted to collect data with 16 boys aged 10-11. Specifically, a so-called Dyadic User Experience Tests (DUxT) was employed; participants were paired up to assume different roles during gameplay. Learning efficacy was evaluated with a pre-post intervention measurement using a domain-specific questionnaire. Learning experience, gaming experiences and usability were evaluated with intensive in situ observations and interviews guided by a multidimensional scheme; content analysis of these transcribed audio data was supplemented by video analysis. Effectiveness of adaptivity algorithms was planned to be evaluated with automatic logfiles, which, unfortunately, could not be realised due to some technical problem. Nonetheless, the user-based data could offer some insights into this issue. Furthermore, we attempted to bridge the existing gap in UX research - the lack of theoretical frameworks in understanding user experience - by adopting Engestrom's (1987) extended framework of Activity Theory (AT) that provides contextual information essential for understanding contradictions and breakdowns observed in the interactions between the game players. The dyadic gameplay setting allows us to explore the issue of group UX. Implications for further applications of the AT framework in the UX research, especially the interplay between evaluation and redesign (i.e., downstream utility of UX evaluation methods), are discussed.
29 Oct 2012
TL;DR: The issue of interdependency can be addressed by casting this as a machine learning problem to build a suitable predictive model from empirical observations and it is shown that setting up the problem based on domain-specific and measurement-driven insights can minimize the impact of the various confounding factors to improve the prediction performance.
Abstract: An imminent challenge that content providers, CDNs, third-party analytics and optimization services, and video player designers in the Internet video ecosystem face is the lack of a single "gold standard" to evaluate different competing solutions. Existing techniques that describe the quality of the encoded signal or controlled studies to measure opinion scores do not translate directly into user experience at scale. Recent work shows that measurable performance metrics such as buffering, startup time, bitrate, and number of bitrate switches impact user experience. However, converting these observations into a quantitative quality-of-experience metric turns out to be challenging since these metrics are interrelated in complex and sometimes counter-intuitive ways, and their relationship to user experience can be unpredictable. To further complicate things, many confounding factors are introduced by the nature of the content itself (e.g., user interest, genre). We believe that the issue of interdependency can be addressed by casting this as a machine learning problem to build a suitable predictive model from empirical observations. We also show that setting up the problem based on domain-specific and measurement-driven insights can minimize the impact of the various confounding factors to improve the prediction performance.
TL;DR: A structural model of utility maximizing users is estimated, which quantifies "user experience" based on their "revealed preferences," and predicts user responses to counterfactual ad placements.
Abstract: We study users' response to sponsored-search advertising using data from Microsoft's Live AdCenter distributed in the "Beyond Search" initiative. We estimate a structural model of utility maximizing users, which quantifies "user experience" based on their "revealed preferences," and predicts user responses to counterfactual ad placements. In the model, each user chooses clicks sequentially to maximize his expected utility under incomplete information about the relevance of ads. We estimate the substitutability of ads in users' utility function, the fixed effects of different ads and positions, user uncertainty about ads' relevance, and user heterogeneity. We find substantial substitability of ads, which generates large negative externalities: 50% more clicks would occur in a hypothetical world in which each ad faces no competition. As for counterfactual ad placements, our simulations indicate that CTR-optimal matching increases CTR by 15% while user-optimal matching increases user welfare by 25% (and neither coincides with assortative matching). Moreover, targeting ad placement to specific users could raise user welfare by 60%. Finally, user welfare could be raised nearly 15% if they had full information about the relevance of ads to them.
5 May 2012
TL;DR: This work presents LadderUX and points out the design rationale for its special features that help UX researchers measure what they actually set out to measure, ensuring that the resulting dominant means-end chains form an accurate representation of the population under study.
Abstract: Laddering is an interview technique that provides rich qualitative data, and subsequent content analysis allows crossing over from qualitative to a quantitative measurement. However, the method is not tailored to data coming from user experience studies, and result-ing data analysis of UX Laddering studies risks to lack scientific rigor with respect to the reliability and validity of the data. Therefore, we present LadderUX and point out the design rationale for its special features that help UX researchers measure what they actually set out to measure, ensuring that the resulting dominant means-end chains form an accurate representation of the population under study.
Patent•
2 Mar 2012TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe methods and systems for transparent user interface integration between remote (published) applications and their local counterparts, providing a seamless, unified user experience, and allowing integration of a start menu, dock, taskbar, desktop shortcuts, windows, window and application switching, system tray elements, clientto-host and host-to-client file type association, URL redirection, browser cookie redirection and token redirection.
Abstract: Methods and systems for transparent user interface integration between remote (“published”) applications and their local counterparts are described, providing a seamless, unified user experience, and allowing integration of a start menu, dock, taskbar, desktop shortcuts, windows, window and application switching, system tray elements, client-to-host and host-to-client file type association, URL redirection, browser cookie redirection, token redirection, status message interception and redirection, and other elements. These methods and systems further enhance theme-integration between a client and remote desktop or virtual machine by remoting all UI elements to a recipient for generation, including text controls, buttons, progress bars, radio buttons, list boxes, or other elements; presenting them with the receiver's product and OS-specific UI; and returning status back to the sender. This may achieve a more unified and transparent UI integration. Furthermore, international text may be correctly received in cross-language environments, or translated into the language of the presenting environment.
11 Feb 2012
TL;DR: It is suggested that open-ended social awareness, making users aware of both others' and their own decisions, may also serve as an effective central design principle for mobile health.
Abstract: Most mobile technology systems designed to encourage healthy decisions focus on prescriptive persuasion, telling the user either implicitly or explicitly what to do, as the primary means of improving health. However, other technically and socially viable options exist. Drawing on both relevant social theory and previous CSCW research, this paper suggests that open-ended social awareness, making users aware of both others' and their own decisions, may also serve as an effective central design principle for mobile health. To explore this approach, this paper presents analysis of qualitative data from two studies of such a system. Results suggest that open-endedness allowed users flexibility and freedom in defining what counts as health, and that the social aspects compounded both the positive and the occasionally negative impacts of this openness. The paper concludes with implications for the design and evaluation of research on mobile health technology, as well as suggestions for how future work can further explore the design space of mobile health beyond prescriptive persuasion.
12 Nov 2012
TL;DR: A comparative analysis of user-created designs for future domestic robots made by participants in Korea and the US using a generative design methodology identifies variable cultural models relating to robotic technology and the cultural meaning of the domestic context as central factors.
Abstract: In this paper, we describe the results of a comparative analysis of user-created designs for future domestic robots made by participants in Korea and the US. We identify their culturally variable expectations and preferences. We use a generative design methodology, which includes users visualizing their designs followed by semi-structured interviews. We describe our results in four areas of design: the look and feel of the robot, interaction mode, social role, and desired task. We identify variable cultural models relating to robotic technology and the cultural meaning of the domestic context as central factors. Finally, we discuss the design implications of our findings to culturally situated robot design.
TL;DR: The results indicate that inhabited space and isomorph effects reduce psychological distance between users, and this, in turn, enhances co-experience.
TL;DR: It is suggested that the guiding principle should be the design of interfaces that serve as a transparent medium for augmenting the authors' natural skills of interaction with the world, instead of requiring conscious attention to the interface as an opaque object in the world.
Abstract: The cognitive sciences are increasingly coming to terms with the embodied, embedded, extended, and experiential aspects of the mind. Exemplifying this shift, the enactive approach points to an essential role of goal-directed bodily activity in the generation of meaningful perceptual experience, i.e., sense-making. Here, building on recent insights into the transformative effects of practical tool-use, we make use of the enactive approach in order to provide a definition of an enactive interface in terms of augmented sense-making. We introduce such a custom-built interface, the Enactive Torch, and present a study of its experiential effects. The results demonstrate that the user experience is not adequately captured by any standardly assumed perceptual modality; rather, it is a new feeling that is mediated by the design of the device and shaped by the overall situation of the task. Taken together these findings show that there is much to be gained by synergies between engineering and the cognitive sciences in the creation of new experience-centered technology. We suggest that the guiding principle should be the design of interfaces that serve as a transparent medium for augmenting our natural skills of interaction with the world, instead of requiring conscious attention to the interface as an opaque object in the world.