Usability is more valuable predictor than product personality for product choice in human-product physical interaction

Product personality and product usability are two important factors which can influence consumers' product choice. Published literature are available regarding independent impact of product personality and product usability on product choice but no research has been reported so far for understanding their collective influence on product choice. In addition, which factor between usability and product personality contributing more in product choice is still not clear. Current research thus aimed to bridge these research gaps by establishing inter-relationships among product personality, usability and product choice. To achieve this goal, two separate experiments were conducted. Results of first experiment revealed that products having high product usability also possessed strong product personality. Following second experiment, it was observed that solitary influence of product usability on product choice was more than the standalone influence of product personality in human-product physical interaction. Moreover, it unfolded the fact that product usability mediates the influence of product personality towards product choice. Established interrelationships among product personality, usability and product choice, would help designer and ergonomists to decide how product attributes could be manipulated to enhance product personality and/or product usability to ensure product choice.     

Product design enhancement using apparent usability and affective quality

In this study, apparent usability and affective quality were integrated in a design framework called the Usability Perception and Emotion Enhancement Model (UPEEM). The UPEEM was validated using structural equation modeling (SEM). The methodology consists of four phases namely product selection, attribute identification, design alternative generation, and design alternative evaluation. The first stage involved the selection of a product that highly involves the consumer. In the attribute identification stage, design elements of the product were identified. The possible values of these elements were also determined for use in the experimentation process. Design of experiments was used to identify how the attributes will be varied in the design alternative stage and which of the attributes significantly contribute to affective quality, apparent usability, and desirability in the design evaluation stage. Results suggest that product attributes related to form are relevant in eliciting intense affect and perception of usability in mobile phones especially those directly related to functionality and aesthetics. This study considered only four product attributes among so many due to the constraints of the research design employed. Attributes related to aesthetic perception of a product enhance apparent usability such as those related to dimensional ratios.     

Methods for inclusion: Employing think aloud protocols in software usability studies with individuals who are deaf

Usability is an important step in the software and product design cycle. There are a number of methodologies such as talk aloud protocol, and cognitive walkthrough that can be employed in usability evaluations. However, many of these methods are not designed to include users with disabilities. Legislation and good design practice should provide incentives for researchers in this field to consider more inclusive methodologies. We carried out two studies to explore the viability of collecting gestural protocols from sign language users who are deaf using the think aloud protocol (TAP) method. Results of our studies support the viability of gestural TAP as a usability evaluation method and provide additional evidence that the cognitive systems used to produce successful verbal protocols in people who are hearing seem to work similarly in people who speak with gestures. The challenges for adapting the TAP method for gestural language relate to how the data was collected and not to the data or its analysis.     

The influence of user expertise and prototype fidelity in usability tests

An empirical study examined the impact of user expertise and prototype fidelity on the outcomes of a usability test. User expertise (expert vs. novice) and prototype fidelity (paper prototype, 3D mock-up, and fully operational appliance) were manipulated as independent variables in a 2 × 3 between-subjects design. Employing a floor scrubber as a model product, 48 users carried out several cleaning tasks. Usability problems identified by participants were recorded. Furthermore, performance, system management strategies and perceived usability were measured. The results showed that experts reported more usability problems than novices but these were considered to be less severe than those reported by novices. Reduced fidelity prototypes were generally suitable to predict product usability of the real appliance. The implications for the running of usability tests are specific to the fidelity of the prototype.     

The influence of product aesthetics and usability over the course of time: a longitudinal field experiment

A longitudinal field experiment was carried out over a period of 2 weeks to examine the influence of product aesthetics and inherent product usability. A 2 × 2 × 3 mixed design was used in the study, with product aesthetics (high/low) and usability (high/low) being manipulated as between-subjects variables and exposure time as a repeated-measures variable (three levels). A sample of 60 mobile phone users was tested during a multiple-session usability test. A range of outcome variables was measured, including performance, perceived usability, perceived aesthetics and emotion. A major finding was that the positive effect of an aesthetically appealing product on perceived usability, reported in many previous studies, began to wane with increasing exposure time. The data provided similar evidence for emotion, which also showed changes as a function of exposure time. The study has methodological implications for the future design of usability tests, notably suggesting the need for longitudinal approaches in usability research. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: This study indicates that product aesthetics influences perceived usability considerably in one-off usability tests but this influence wanes over time. When completing a usability test it is therefore advisable to adopt a longitudinal multiple-session approach to reduce the possibly undesirable influence of aesthetics on usability ratings.     

A Context-of-Use Taxonomy for Usability Studies

The interest in developing usable products has led to the inclusion of usability aspects in product development processes. Nonetheless, the fact that there is a tendency to overlook characteristics of the context in which a product is to be used means that the usability of a product in its operational environment is often diminished. One of the main reasons why this is the case is because there is no clear and sufficiently detailed model available for defining the concept of context of use. A comprehensive taxonomy that describes context of use and its attributes by means of precise definitions is proposed. This taxonomy will serve as a basis for improving the validity of usability activities by enabling an analysis of the conditions of use of a product in usability studies in a structured way.     

An evaluation of warning habits and beliefs across the adult life span

Beliefs about warnings and habits associated with reading them were assessed for 863 individuals of various ages. Information gathered for various common household products included (a) how frequently people attend to warning information, (b) the degree of risk they believe is involved during product usage, and (c) how important they believe warnings are for different product types. Also assessed were perceived helpfulness and comprehension for symbols commonly found on product labels or on signs in the environment. Respondents 55 years and older reported reading product warnings more frequently than did younger adults, although they generally perceived warnings as less important. However, no overall age-related differences were found for perceived level of risk involved in using different product types. Although older adults generally perceived symbols to be very helpful when using a particular product, their comprehension levels were poorer than those of younger adults for half of the symbols. Overall, these data suggest that adults of all ages do read warnings on a variety of product types and that they believe warning information is important. This research illustrates the importance of including older adults in usability studies during the development of warning systems, given age-related effects may be associated with some aspects of the warning processing but not others.     

Usability of product X-lessons from a real product

Using the example of a real product, this paper shows how various usability assessments, conducted by different human factors engineers, in several phases of the product's development life-cycle, identified similar potential usability problems. Circumstances dictated that no remedial action was taken, so it was possible to track these potential usability defects to customer sites, where it was found that most of the important problems did indeed occur. Thus, it can be demonstrated that human factors advice was valid and reliable. In simpler terms, early usability evaluation by human factors engineers can save hours of wasted development effort and customer frustration, and can help to ensure that a more usable product is produced.     

Applying conjoint analysis to evaluate consumer preferences toward subcompact cars

The purpose of this study is to find the important attributes of subcompact cars that effect customer choice, using conjoint analysis as an analytical tool. Subcompact cars currently make up the biggest segment of the car industry, but before such products are launched, firms should know customer needs in order to determine the most suitable product specifications. However, consumers tend to evaluate the key attributes of a product as a whole, rather than independently, and thus conjoint analysis can be very useful in this context as a result of decomposing such overall evaluations into their individual components. This study thus adopts conjoint analysis to uncover the hidden motivations that may not even be apparent to the respondents themselves when considering the appeal of subcompact cars. As a result, the following six attributes of subcompact cars were identified: power, appearance, safety, fuel efficiency, price and gadgets. Using subjects from Thailand, 201 respondents were asked to rank their preferences for eight subcompact car models with different combinations of these six attributes. The results indicate that a subcompact car’s appearance has the greatest influence on the respondents’ buying intentions, followed by fuel efficiency, price, and safety, which all had similar effects. Power and gadgets are the two least important attributes with regard to purchase intention. Based on the current findings, it is concluded that conjoint analysis is an appropriate tool to identify the key attributes of subcompact cars. Using the results presented in this work, manufacturers can better tailor their subcompact cars to meet the needs of customers, and thus increase sales.     

Product design and apparent usability. The influence of novelty in product appearance

This research enhances our understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and usability by investigating the effects of novelty in product appearance on the apparent usability of a product. In two experimental studies using washing machines and digital cameras as stimuli, we systematically manipulated the level of novelty (low vs. high) in the product appearance by changing the product's color or shape. Participants were presented with one of these product appearances and a list of the product's technical specifications. Next, participants indicated how difficult or easy they expected the usage of the product to be. Our findings demonstrate that because people associate a high level of novelty with technological advancement, novelty in a product appearance negatively affects their expectations of a product's usability at the point of sale. Furthermore, novices are more likely to use the level of novelty as a cue for a product's apparent usability than experts.     

Automatic generation of multiple choice questions using dependency-based semantic relations

In this paper, we present an unsupervised dependency-based approach to extract semantic relations to be applied in the context of automatic generation of multiple choice questions (MCQs). MCQs also known as multiple choice tests provide a popular solution for large-scale assessments as they make it much easier for test-takers to take tests and for examiners to interpret their results. Manual generation of MCQs is a very expensive and time-consuming task and yet they often need to be produced on a large scale and within short iterative cycles. We approach the problem of automated MCQ generation with the help of unsupervised relation extraction, a technique used in a number of related natural language processing problems. The goal of Unsupervised relation extraction is to identify the most important named entities and terminology in a document and then recognise semantic relations between them, without any prior knowledge as to the semantic types of the relations or their specific linguistic realisation. We use these techniques to process instructional texts and identify those facts (terminology, entities, and semantic relations between them) that are likely to be important for assessing test-takers’ familiarity with the instructional material. We investigate an approach to learn semantic relations between named entities by employing a dependency tree model. Our findings show that an optimised configuration of our MCQ generation system is capable of attaining high precision rates, which are much more important than recall in the automatic generation of MCQs. We also carried out a user-centric evaluation of the system, where subject domain experts evaluated automatically generated MCQ items in terms of readability, usefulness of semantic relations, relevance, acceptability of questions and distractors and overall MCQ usability. The results of this evaluation make it possible for us to draw conclusions about the utility of the approach in practical e-Learning applications.     

Instructions, mechanical ability and performance

The role of instructions aimed at non-specialist users was studied. Two groups of 15 students were given the task of mounting a window shade. The first group carried out the task using the manufacturers' original instructions. The second group used an 'improved' version of the instructions. It was found that the 'improved' instructions significantly contributed to the usability of the product, and that the original instructions failed to fulfil their basic aim: to enable the majority of consumers to successfully use the product.     

The role of non-visual aesthetics in consumer product evaluation

The present article addresses the impact of non-visual aesthetics of consumer products on the outcomes of usability tests such as perceived usability, user performance and user affect. Building on the research surrounding the impact of visual aesthetics in usability testing, the present work aimed to determine whether the same pattern of effects repeatedly found for visual aesthetics will also be found for non-visual aesthetics. A series of three experiments was carried out, all examining sound and touch as two prominent dimensions of non-visual aesthetics. To increase the robustness of the results, the experiments were conducted with three different consumer products, which were a smartphone (N=60), vacuum cleaner (N=60), and video racing game (N=60). Although manipulation checks confirmed that users generally experienced both sound and tactile product properties as intended by the experimental manipulation, in none of the studies the results showed an effect on perceived usability. Other outcome variables such as affect and performance showed a few selected effects. Overall, this suggests that findings from the field of visual aesthetics cannot be easily transferred to the domain of non-visual aesthetics. The findings of the present studies are discussed within the framework of Schifferstein’s work on sensory dominance.     

Measuring website quality: asymmetric effect of user satisfaction

Website quality measurement tools have been largely static and have struggled to determine relevant attributes of user satisfaction. This study compares and contrasts attributes of user satisfaction based on usability guidelines seeking to identify practical easy-to-administer measurement tools. The website users assessed business school homepages according to six criteria and fulfilled a randomly assigned yet typical task. After completing the task, respondents assessed the same six website quality/satisfaction criteria again. The consumer–product relationship seems similar to the link between a user and a website. User satisfaction, just like consumer satisfaction, is asymmetric and non-linear. Content and navigation have been identified as key ingredients when users judged website quality, alerting web designers and website practitioners to focus more closely on those attributes. Similar lessons can be drawn for marketing professionals, who typically supervise or determine the content, structure and other website facets.     

The relation between usability and product success in cell phones

The cell phone is not a simple communication tool. People use embedded mobile phone features such as games, cameras and wireless internet for various purposes of entertainment and shopping. In some cases usability problems impact negatively on product success, whereas in other cases they do not. The objective of our study was to develop a questionnaire for cell phones and investigate the relation between usability and product success. We reviewed existing usability studies and factors for product success to develop the questionnaire for cell phones. Subjects then evaluated the usability and success factors of cell phones. Finally, re-purchase intention and success scores including usability scores were analysed to determine whether they are positively related and which usability factors impact cell phone product success. Design, customer needs and innovativeness of cell phones were especially important among success factors, whereas more attention should be paid to satisfaction, feedback and efficiency among the usability dimensions.     

Parts of life: configuring equipment to individual lifestyle

Usability is the standard criterion for interactive products in human factors engineering and can be measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and satisfaction. Yet many products that satisfy these criteria are not used and in the past have faded away from the product scene. Other products that do not satisfy these criteria at all may be used quite extensively and have sometimes found wide, if not global, acceptance. There must be other factors than usability that predispose people to use particular products. On the basis of an evaluation study on a videophone system, a number of issues have been analysed that throw more light on why people like to use certain products. One important aspect is to what extent interactive products fit into the daily lifestyle and the personal environment of the user. The more complex products get, and the more functionalities they acquire, matching to individual lifestyle becomes more important, and, consequently, the more configurable these products have to be. This is an underestimated aspect of the design of interactive products that apparently will need increasing input from human and cognitive engineering.     

The usability analysis with heuristic evaluation and analytic hierarchy process

Today people increasingly expect more from the functionality of a web site, so the web usability has emerged as an important topic. It is generally hard to renew the existing web sites to meet the changing demands of users. Therefore, the present study is aimed at detailing the usability problems of web sites. To this end, Heuristic Evaluation (HE) is used to identify the usability problems, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to rate their severity. Finally, for a more user-friendly web site, a new approach to judging severity of usability problems is developed by integrating AHP into HE.

Relevance to industry

There is an increasing importance for higher usability in the web development industry and communities. Different usability evaluation techniques have been developed and incorporated into the process of web site design and development. This study proposes a new approach to reveal usability problems on a web site and to define solution priority of these problems.     

Beyond the User Preferences: Aligning the Prototype Design to the Users’ Expectations

It is important for practitioners to conceptualize and tailor a prototype in tune with the users’ expectations in the early stages of the design life cycle so the modifications of the product design in advanced phases are kept to a minimum. According to user preference studies, the aesthetic and the usability of a system play an important role in the user appraisal and selection of a product. However, user preferences are just a part of the equation. The fact that a user prefers one product over the other does not mean that he or she would necessarily buy it. To understand the factors affecting the user's assessment of a product before the actual use of the product and the user's intention to purchase the product we conducted a study, reported in this article. Our study, a modification of a well‐known protocol, considers the users’ preferences of six simulated smartphones each with different combination of attributes. A sample consisting of 365 participants was involved in our analysis. Our results confirm that the main basis for the users’ pre‐use preferences is the aesthetics of the product, whereas our results suggest that the main basis for the user's intention to purchase are the expected usability of the product. Moreover, our analysis reveals that the personal characteristics of the users have different effects on both the users’ preferences and their intention to purchase a product. These results suggest that the designers should carefully balance the aesthetics and usability features of a prototype in tune with the users expectations. If the conceptualization of a product is done properly the redesign cycles after the usability testing can be reduced and speed up the process for releasing the product on the market.     

Parts of life: configuring equipment to individual lifestyle

Usability is the standard criterion for interactive products in human factors engineering and can be measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, learnability and satisfaction. Yet many products that satisfy these criteria are not used and in the past have faded away from the product scene. Other products that do not satisfy these criteria at all may be used quite extensively and have sometimes found wide, if not global, acceptance. There must be other factors than usability that predispose people to use particular products. On the basis of an evaluation study on a videophone system, a number of issues have been analysed that throw more light on why people like to use certain products. One important aspect is to what extent interactive products fit into the daily lifestyle and the personal environment of the user. The more complex products get, and the more functionalities they acquire, matching to individual lifestyle becomes more important, and, consequently, the more configurable these products have to be. This is an underestimated aspect of the design of interactive products that apparently will need increasing input from human and cognitive engineering.