Apperception as a Multisensory Process in Material Experience

Visual perspective has dominated experience research in humantechnology interaction for decades now. The neglect of other sensory modalities is gradually being addressed by scholars and designers, who investigate user experience based on touch, smell, taste, sound and even expressive bodily interactions. In cognitive and affective processes, user experience is always multi-modal, not just regarding perceived multi-sensory information, but also while perceiving through one modality we mentally construct information relevant to the other senses. This article reports the results of an experiment, where participants (N = 52) appraised materials either only by touching them or only by seeing. Th…

Emotional Dimensions of User Experience ? A User Psychological Analysis

User psychology is a human–technology interaction research approach that uses psychological concepts, theories, and findings to structure problems of human–technology interaction. As the notion of user experience has become central in human–technology interaction research and in product development, it is necessary to investigate the user psychology of user experience. This analysis of emotional human–technology interaction is based on the psychological theory of basic emotions. Three studies, two laboratory experiments, and one field study are used to investigate the basic emotions and the emotional mind involved in user experience. The first and second experiments study the measurement of…

Sensory modalities and mental content in product experience

Contemporary research in human-technology interaction emphasises the need to focus on what people experience when they interact with technological artefacts. Understanding how people experience products requires detailed investigation of how physical design properties are mentally represented, and the theorisation of how people represent information obtained through different modalities still needs work. The objective of this study is to investigate how people experience modality-related affective aspects of products, using the psychological concept of mental content. For this purpose, we adopt the framework of user psychology, which is the sub-area of psychology involved with investigating…

How older and younger people see technology in Northern and Southern Europe : Closing the generation gap

Background Mental representations of technology can be affected by many social and biological factors. The aim of this study was to test the effects of two of these factors, age and culture, on how people mentally represent and experience technologies by comparing the conceptions of old and young people in Spain and Finland. Both Spain and Finland are European countries, but they are historically, geographically, and culturally very different. Method The study is framed within the life-based design (LBD) paradigm, where culture and age interact to define particular forms of life in which technology might be used and perceived differently. We hypothesised that there are differences in the me…

Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments

Open educational resources (OERs) provide opportunities as enablers of societal development, but they also create new challenges. From the perspective of content providers and educational institutions, particularly, cultural and context-related challenges emerge. Even though barriers regarding large-scale adoption of OERs are widely discussed, empirical evidence for determining challenges in relation to particular contexts is still rare. Such context-specific barriers generally can jeopardize the acceptance of OERs and, in particular, social OER environments. We conducted a large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation in the school context to determine how teachers and learners percei…

Modelling Drivers’ Adaptation to Assistance Systems

Human factors research and engineering of advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) must consider how drivers adapt to their presence. The major obstruction to this at the moment is poor understanding of the details of the adaptive processes that the human cognition undergoes when faced with such changes. This paper presents a simulation model that predicts how drivers adapt to a steering assistance system. Our approach is based on computational rationality, and demonstrates how task interleaving strategies adapt to the task environment and the driver’s goals and cognitive limitations. A supervisor controls eye movements between the driving and non-driving tasks, making this choice on the …

User psychology of emotional user experience

Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Usability in Four Icon Design Eras

Technological artefacts express time periods in their visual design. Due time, visual culture changes and thus affects the design of pictorial representations in technological products, such as icons in user interfaces. Previous research of temporal aspects in human-computer interaction has been focusing on particular interaction situations, but not on the effects of design eras on user experience. The influence of icon design styles of different eras on aesthetic and usability experiences was studied with the method of primed product comparisons. Affective preferences and their processing times were analysed in order to examine visual usability in terms of semantic distance and aesthetic a…

Utilizing Experience Goals in Design of Industrial Systems

The core idea of experience-driven design is to define the intended experience before functionality and technology. This is a radical idea for companies that have built their competences around specific technologies. Although many technology companies are willing to shift their focus towards experience-driven design, reports on real-life cases about the utilization of this design approach are rare. As part of an industry-led research program, we introduced experience-driven design to metal industry companies with experience goals as the key technique. Four design cases in three companies showed that the goals are useful in keeping the focus on user experience, but several challenges are sti…

Radical innovation by theoretical abstraction - a challenge for the user-centred designer

AbstractIt is generally accepted that scientific disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology contribute beneficially to design by providing understanding of users’ needs, experiences, and desires. Arguably, however, these disciplines have more to contribute, because they include theories and models that can be applied as design frames and principles. More specifically, goal-setting, visualization, thematization, and conceptual reconfiguration are general mechanisms through which theories translate into design contributions. Actualizing radical design solutions via these mechanisms is discussed: theories provide appropriate means of abstraction, which allows ‘distance’ from u…

Orientation Aids for Mobile Maps

Using mobile maps to represent urban, work, or entertainment environments offers new possibilities to plan and carry out tasks. One potentially critical problem in mobile map usage is the misalignment between the user's frame of reference and the frame of reference of the map. In the experiment reported here, three different ‘orientation aids’ were tested in the context of restricted space, such as a large factory hall. The aim of the study was to find out how user interface design can help the user mentally align misaligned frames of reference for efficient mobile map use. The results of the experiment (N = 12) suggest using a ‘you are here’ marker and landmark highlighting, while canonica…

Understanding Social OER Environments—A Quantitative Study on Factors Influencing the Motivation to Share and Collaborate

Social software environments are increasingly used for open education: teachers and learners share and collaborate in these environments. While there are various possibilities for the inclusion of such social functionalities for OER, many organizational, individual and technological challenges can hinder the motivation of teachers to share and collaborate in these environments. Current research cannot explain what barriers teachers face in social OER environments and how those challenges influence their motivation to engage in such environments. An exploratory factor analysis was used in the context of schools and higher education institutions to investigate the possible barriers to engagin…

Emotional user experience: Traits, events, and states☆

Emotional experience has become an important topic in human-technology interaction research and design. Nevertheless, such research and design often lacks a proper explanatory basis and methodologically robust operationalisation. In this article, a conceptualisation of emotional user experience is formulated based on the appraisal theory of emotion, where the goal congruence of the interaction events and the task-independent individual traits are thought to underlie the user's emotional response. A laboratory study with N=50 participants conducting ordinary computer tasks is reported. The results suggest that subjective emotional experience depends on a number of factors relating to individ…

Evaluating the Authenticity of Virtual Environments: Comparison of Three Devices

Immersive virtual environments (VEs) have the potential to provide novel cost effective ways for evaluating not only new environments and usability scenarios, but also potential user experiences. To achieve this, VEs must be adequately realistic. The level of perceived authenticity can be ascertained by measuring the levels of immersion people experience in their VE interactions. In this paper the degree of authenticity is measured via anauthenticity indexin relation to three different immersive virtual environment devices. These devices include (1) a headband, (2) 3D glasses, and (3) a head-mounted display (HMD). A quick scale for measuring immersion, feeling of control, and simulator sick…

Beyond MAYA for game-changing multisensory design

With information technology becoming ever more embedded in our surrounding everyday things, the nature of interactions and the way we experience digitalization is becoming increasingly embodied. Thus, growing effort is placed on examining the multisensory nature of interaction experience. From a design perspective, increased knowledge of how people experience materials and how to design to encourage varying material experiences opens new opportunities for the generation of rich multisensory user experience, and accomplishing game-changing results. In particular, the innovation space opened up by understanding people's material expectations of designs is significant. An experiment (N = 78) w…

Defining user experience goals to guide the design of industrial systems

The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing…

Quick Affective Judgments: Validation of a Method for Primed Product Comparisons

A method for primed product comparisons was developed, based on the methodological considerations of emotional appraisal process and affective mental contents. The method was implemented as a computer tool, which was utilised in two experiments (N = 18 for both). Ten adjectives served as primes, and five drinking glass pictures as stimuli. Participants' task was to choose a preference between two glasses, given the priming adjective. The results validate the method by providing test-retest reliability measures and showing convergence with questionnaires. Further, different evaluation times between the primes and the stimuli reveal the existence of different mental processes associated with …

Appraisal and Mental Contents in Human-Technology Interaction

User experience has become a key concept in investigating human-technology interaction. Therefore it has become essential to consider how user experience can be explicated using psychological concepts. Emotion has been widely considered to be an important dimension of user experience, and one obvious link between modern psychology and the analysis of user experience assumes the analysis of emotion in interaction processes. In this paper, the focus is on the relationship between action types and elicited emotional patterns. In three experiments including N = 40 participants each, it is demonstrated that the types of emotions experienced when people evaluate and use technical artefacts differ…

Computational Rationality as a Theory of Interaction

Funding Information: This work was funded by the Finnish Center for AI and Academy of Finland (“BAD” and “Human Automata”). We thank our reviewers, Xiuli Chen, Joerg Mueller, Christian Guckelsberger, Sebastiaan de Peuter, Samuel Kaski, Pierre-Alexandre Murena, Antti Keuru-lainen, Suyog Chandramouli, and Roderick Murray-Smith for their comments. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 ACM. How do people interact with computers? This fundamental question was asked by Card, Moran, and Newell in 1983 with a proposition to frame it as a question about human cognition - in other words, as a matter of how information is processed in the mind. Recently, the question has been reframed as one of adaptation: how …

Luovasti rutiinilla : innovaatioprosessin tarkastelua kahden kehitysprojektin avulla

Innovaatiot ovat viimeisten vuosikymmenten aikana nousseet keskeiseen rooliin kansantaloudellisissa mittareissa, tieteellisessä tutkimuksessa ja erilaisissa keskusteluissa. Innovaatiosta on tullut avainsana talouspolitiikassa, taloudellista muutosta tutkittaessa ja projekteja perustettaessa. Kaiken tämän puheen keskellä on tärkeää yrittää ymmärtää ja muistaa, mikä innovaatio oikeastaan on ja millainen toiminta sen aiheuttaa. Millainen on innovaation muodostumisen tapahtumakenttä? Mitkä seikat vaikuttavat innovaation syntyyn? Voiko innovaation syntyä ennustaa? Historiallisesti suurien innovaatioiden syntyä muistellaan usein tarinoina, joissa yhdistyvät suuri nerous ja onnekkaat sattumat. Inn…

Designing Gesture-Based Control for Factory Automation

We report the development and evaluation of a gesture-based interaction prototype for controlling the loading station of a factory automation system. In this context, gesture-based interaction has the potential to free users from the tedious physical controls but it must also account for safety considerations and users’ perceptions. We evaluated the gesture interaction concept in the field to understand its applicability to industrial settings. Our findings suggest that gesture-based interaction is an emotional, physically charged experience that has the potential to enhance the work process. Participants’ feedback also highlighted challenges related to the reliability of gesture recognitio…

Removing the barriers to adoption of social OER environments

Despite the opportunities and benefits of OER, research and practice has shown how the OER repositories have a hard time in reaching an active user-base. The opportunities of experience exchange and simple feedback mechanisms of social software have been realized for improving the situation and many are basing or transforming their OER offerings towards socially powered environments. Research on social software has shown how knowledge-sharing barriers in online environments are highly culture and context-specific and require proper investigation. It is crucial to study what challenges might arise in such environments and how to overcome them, ensuring a successful uptake. A large-scale (N =…

Emotional user experience and feeling of control

Current research on emotional user experience lacks a clear exposition on the relationship between feeling of control and the emotion response. The appraisal theory of emotion posits that perceived control over an event is an important factor in determining the emotional response to the event. It is therefore hypothesised, that the relationship between emotional experiences and interaction events is mediated by feeling of control. In an experiment (N = 38), participants used a joystick to control game objects, and gave self-reports of their emotional states and feeling of control. Pathway analyses predicting the factors of emotional experience with event logs reveal that feeling of control …

The Appraisal Theory of Emotion in Human–Computer Interaction

This chapter reviews the appraisal theory of emotion and how it has been employed in human–computer interaction (HCI) research. This theory views emotion as a process that evaluates the subjective significance of an event. We demonstrate the usefulness of the perspective for HCI, as emotion is defined in terms of the events of the task environment and the goals and knowledge of the subject. Importantly, the appraisal theory ties these factors together in a cognitive appraisal process order to explain the variety of subjective emotional experiences. This is important for two reasons. First, a strong theoretical commitment allows researchers and designers to derive testable hypotheses from th…

Semantic distance as a critical factor in icon design for in-car infotainment systems

In-car infotainment systems require icons that enable fluent cognitive information processing and safe interaction while driving. An important issue is how to find an optimised set of icons for different functions in terms of semantic distance. In an optimised icon set, every icon needs to be semantically as close as possible to the function it visually represents and semantically as far as possible from the other functions represented concurrently. In three experiments (N = 21 each), semantic distances of 19 icons to four menu functions were studied with preference rankings, verbal protocols, and the primed product comparisons method. The results show that the primed product comparisons me…

Interactive map interface for controlling bridge crane automation A cognitive-affective approach

This study outlines the development process of a new touch screen based user interface for controlling bridge crane automation in industrial environments. A user study of existing situation (n1 = 11) was used to develop an understanding of the cognitive and emotional design goals for crane operation. Conceptualization of these goals in the context of automation produced a set of requirements, which were used to develop a map-based touch screen user interface. Two field tests (n2 = 5, n3 = 5) revealed how bridge crane operators cognise and emotionally experience the increasing automation and how the user interface should be designed to support the operator’s spatial mental representation as …

Multitasking in Driving as Optimal Adaptation Under Uncertainty

Objective The objective was to better understand how people adapt multitasking behavior when circumstances in driving change and how safe versus unsafe behaviors emerge. Background Multitasking strategies in driving adapt to changes in the task environment, but the cognitive mechanisms of this adaptation are not well known. Missing is a unifying account to explain the joint contribution of task constraints, goals, cognitive capabilities, and beliefs about the driving environment. Method We model the driver’s decision to deploy visual attention as a stochastic sequential decision-making problem and propose hierarchical reinforcement learning as a computationally tractable solution to it. The…