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.     

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.     

The influence of product aesthetics and user state in usability testing

An empirical study examined the effects of two influencing factors in usability tests on user performance and usability ratings. Product aesthetics (high vs. low) as the main independent factor and prior usage event (positive vs. negative) as a subsidiary independent factor were varied in a between-participants design. 60 participants took part in the experiment, completing a number of typical tasks of mobile phone users. The results showed that increased product aesthetics had a positive effect on perceived usability and led to longer task completion times. After a negative usage event had been experimentally induced, usability ratings dropped as expected but user performance on subsequent tasks remained unaffected. An important implication of the study is that the aesthetic properties of a product may have multiple effects that go beyond perceived product attractiveness.     

The contingent effect of personal IT innovativeness and IT self-efficacy on innovative use of complex IT

While organisational investment in complex information technologies (IT) keeps growing, these technologies are often applied at a superficial level and fail to attain the promised benefits. To further extract the value potential of complex IT, this study investigates employee users' innovate with IT (IwIT), which is a post-acceptance behaviour that refers to individual users applying IT in novel ways to support their task performance. Drawing on the information system continuance (ISC) model, we propose a research framework with perceived usefulness (PU) and satisfaction (SAT) as the antecedents of IwIT. We further emphasise the contingent role of personal characteristics and include personal innovativeness with IT (PIIT) and IT self-efficacy (ITSE) as the moderators of the framework. We validate the model with data from users of two complex ITs: enterprise resource planning and business intelligence technologies. The results suggest that positioning personal factors as moderators significantly increases the explanatory power of the ISC model and offers a more comprehensive understanding about IwIT. Specifically, ITSE positively moderates the effect of PU and negatively moderates the effect of SAT on IwIT. The moderating role of PIIT, however, is subject to the specific type of IT of investigation.     

Helpful-stressful cycle? Psychological links between type of mobile phone user and stress

The profusion of smartphones allows more people to have access to a telephone, a computer and the Internet, all via one device. Despite this convenience, excessive usage and habitual checking can cause significant stress for smartphone users. A helpful-stressful cycle is beginning to emerge as a pattern. With this in mind, we develop a model that examines the differences between smartphone and traditional mobile phone users with regard to the relationships between four psychological factors: locus of control (LOC), social interaction anxiety (SIA), need for touch (NFT) and materialism. Our examination explores this in the context of the level of stress these two types of users experience when using their chosen phone. The results from our empirical study suggest that user type moderates the aforementioned relationships. The effects of LOC, SIA and NFT on ‘technostress’ are stronger for smartphone users than for traditional mobile phone users. In contrast, materialism is positively related to stress for traditional mobile phone users but not for smartphone users.     

The influence of design aesthetics in usability testing: Effects on user performance and perceived usability

This article examined the effects of product aesthetics on several outcome variables in usability tests. Employing a computer simulation of a mobile phone, 60 adolescents (14-17 yrs) were asked to complete a number of typical tasks of mobile phone users. Two functionally identical mobile phones were manipulated with regard to their visual appearance (highly appealing vs not appealing) to determine the influence of appearance on perceived usability, performance measures and perceived attractiveness. The results showed that participants using the highly appealing phone rated their appliance as being more usable than participants operating the unappealing model. Furthermore, the visual appearance of the phone had a positive effect on performance, leading to reduced task completion times for the attractive model. The study discusses the implications for the use of adolescents in ergonomic research.     

Product form design using customer perception evaluation by a combined superellipse fitting and ANN approach

Product aesthetics plays an important role in new product design and development. Product form can deliver product images and affect customer’s impression to a product. However, it is usually difficult to apply conventional approaches to represent the product form precisely and effectively for modeling the relationship between product image and customer perception. The objective of this work is to develop a computational technique for product aesthetics design so that customer perception can be taken into product form design in a more systematic and intelligent manner. To achieve this aim, a novel parametric approach is proposed to introduce design parameters such as line, size, and ratio into product design model and the technique of generalized superellipse fitting is adopted to describe the outline pattern of a product. Since customer perception on a product is highly non-linear and very difficult to be described by any traditional mathematical approaches, an artificial neural network (ANN) model is therefore established to relate the design parameters and the perceptual values for the design of a new product. A case study of mobile phone design, in which twelve numerical parameters are defined for the conceptual model, has been conducted to explain the implementation of the proposed approach. A three-layered perceptron ANN model is developed to predict the perceptual values of stylishness based on a survey using 32 mobile phone samples. The results of the case study illustrate that the proposed approach can successfully generate an optimum design of a mobile phone by applying a genetic algorithm (GA) on the trained ANN model.     

Facets of simplicity for the smartphone interface: A structural model

Motivated by the need to develop an integrated measure of simplicity perception for a smartphone user interface, our research incorporated visual aesthetics, information design, and task complexity into an extended construct of simplicity. Drawn from three distinct domains of human–computer interaction design and related areas, the new development of a simplicity construct and measurement scales were then validated. The final measurement model consisted of six components: reduction, organization, component complexity, coordinative complexity, dynamic complexity, and visual aesthetics. The following phase aimed at verifying the relationship between simplicity perception of the interface and evaluations of user satisfaction. The hypothesis was accepted that user satisfaction was positively affected by simplicity perception and that the relationship between the two constructs was very strong. The findings imply that a simplified interface design of the task performance, information hierarchy, and visual display attributes contributes to positive satisfaction evaluations when users interact with their smartphone as they engage in communication, information search, and entertainment activities.     

Distinguishing and quantifying the visual aesthetics of a product: An integrated approach of eye-tracking and EEG

Although some methods of measuring visual aesthetics have been established, such as subjective reporting, feature calculating, and physiological assessing, designers still lack an integrated and quantified method in measuring the visual aesthetics of their products. This study aims to integrate eye-tracking metrics and EEG measurements to distinguish and quantify the visual aesthetics of a product. Thirty-two 3D prototypes of LED desk lamp with multiple views were designed to simulate an aesthetic appreciation flow. Eye-tracking and EEG signals were simultaneously recorded when participants were freely browsing each lamp. The evaluation of subjective visual aesthetics was conducted after each browsing. The results demonstrated that fixation time ratio and dwell time ratio significantly differed among the three clusters of visual aesthetic lamps. Meanwhile, average fixation duration only significantly differed between low and high aesthetic lamps and pupil size had no significant variation. Moreover, low aesthetic lamps evoked significantly weakened relative alpha power and enhanced relative gamma power. Thus, the eye-tracking metrics and the EEG measurements can distinguish the visual aesthetics of lamps. Regarding the results of quantification, the integrated multimodal physiological signals achieved an improved and reasonable accuracy. It seems beneficial to integrate multimodal physiological signals involved in different flows of visual aesthetic appreciation in quantifying the visual aesthetics of a product.Relevance to industryAs a premise of attracting consumers’ attention, visual aesthetics has been identified as a crucial role in product design and marketing. Thus, thorough research on the variations of multimodal physiological signals involved in information retrieval and processing in appreciation flow can provide a distinction between product visual aesthetics. The quantification method can be utilized by designers in measuring the visual aesthetics of their products.     

Output-oriented power saving mode for mobile devices

Fast battery discharge is still the most nerve wracking issue for smartphone users. Though many energy saving methods have been studied, still users are not satisfied with their phone’s battery. Power management system provides low power mode when the phone is not in use for a long time. When the user is interacting with the phone, current system assumes the user is interactive and should keep the device in active mode. However, this is not true. After the user’s interaction, the device processes the request and displays the result on the smartphone’s output device. During this period, the user cannot see any meaningful information from the phone. In this paper, we propose a new low power mode where we put smartphone’s output device into low power mode while phone is preparing result for the user. We named this as o-sleep, an output-oriented power saving mode. While a device is processing a user’s request, output from the device may require preparation time. We consider the situation as the device’s output idle time and put the phone’s user interfaces into sleep mode while maintaining other subsystems in active state. To prove our concept, we have applied our technique onto various smartphone applications with varying operation environment. From the experiment, we found that the smartphone entered the o-sleep mode up to 58% of its total usage time in various test scenarios. Usability study supported feasibility of our proposed method.     

The visual aesthetics measurement on interface design education

Visual aesthetics measurement has been studied in the information processing. Indeed, it was mainly conducted by designers and experts previously, which is related to evaluate final works of visual aesthetics. By contrast, relations of inspirations and outcomings are largely ignored in the field of interface design. The result was measured by students, users, and experts, so as to understand the different effects of the interface design inspirations. Two studies were to investigate the influences of inspirations, such as the image‐verbal–oriented (task 1) and the interface‐image–oriented (task 2), and measure the outcomings by users, experts, and participants works. Thirty participants, two experts, and two users, rated the interface design works. The code frequency and correlation analysis were adopted. The findings demonstrate that usability and aesthetics are scored highly in task 2 that is supported by the rating from users and experts. The originality and creativity are rated superior in task 1 than task 2 that is rated by experts. This study reveals that image‐verbal–oriented inspiration matches to the creativity and originality in interface design, and the interface‐image–oriented inspiration was related to the usability and aesthetics, which contribute to the interface design processing and inspiration adoption.     

Picture browsing non-touch interaction methods for smartphones using an accelerometer and camera with a focus on phone dialing

This paper proposes various interaction methods for smartphones that allow users to call an intended contact without touching the smartphone screen. Existing applications allow users to answer phone calls without touching the screen—by shaking the phone, for example—but do not allow users to make phone calls. The proposed interaction allows users to select and call an intended contact by utilizing the iPhone’s accelerometer. The interaction also involves video camera scanning for commands to switch between group-selection and individual-selection modes to facilitate the selection of the call candidate. Furthermore, the proposed interaction secures transparency by displaying the camera’s video stream on the smartphone screen. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the interaction, an application using the interaction was developed, and two simple experiments were conducted, in which participants were asked to make phone calls using the application. The success rate was 98 %, and user satisfaction with the proposed interaction was approximately 90 %. Therefore, the results showed that the proposed interaction could be an effective solution to allow users to make phone calls in situations where they cannot physically touch the iPhone screen. Furthermore, this solution could be used in many fields that need interactions with users in mobile applications.     

智能手机的病毒攻防

智能手机市场发展蕴含着巨大商机,也给病毒制造者带来了足够的动力。本文对目前主要的智能手机病毒侵入方式及侵害结果进行分类描述,对其发展趋势进行预测,并从普通用户、业务监管、网站监督等角度探讨如何应对智能手机病毒危害。     

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.     

A blessing,not a curse: Experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance

The present experiment investigated the effect of visual aesthetics on performance. A total of 257 volunteers completed a series of search tasks on a website providing health-related information. Four versions of the website were created by manipulating visual aesthetics (high vs. low) and usability (good vs. poor) in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Task completion times and error rates were used as performance measures. A main effect of usability on both error rates and completion time was observed. Additionally, a significant interaction of visual aesthetics and usability revealed that high aesthetics enhanced performance under conditions of poor usability. Thus, in contrast to the notion that visual aesthetics may worsen performance, visual aesthetics even compensated for poor usability by speeding up task completion. The practical and theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.     

安卓之移动医疗服务平台的开发

随着科学进步和时代的发展,手机操作智能化趋势日渐突出,以前只有在电脑上才能运行的软件现在逐渐发展成在手机上也能运行的软件。移动医疗服务也可以用手机来实现,这样做既便于用户查看,又便于管理者进行管理,因此开发一款基于Android系统的移动医疗服务软件是非常有必要的。本系统就是基于Android平台的在智能手机上运行的移动医疗服务平台。     

Naturalistic data collection of head posture during smartphone use

Association between smartphone use and head-down tilt posture has not yet been quantitatively evaluated in natural settings. This study aimed to objectively assess the angle and duration of head-down tilt posture of smartphone users during a typical working day via naturalistic data collection. Thirty-one college students conducted their typical school activities while their head posture and smartphone-app usage records were collected simultaneously for 8?hours. Participants spent 125.9?minutes (median usage duration) on their smartphones with significantly larger head-down tilt (p?<?.05) than when they were not using the phone. Head tilt angle greater than 30° was found to be more common when using the phone, while head tilt less than 20° was more common when they were not using the phone. Study findings provide empirical evidence that supports an association between the duration of smartphone use and the intensity of head-down tilt posture.

Practitioner Summary: Head postures of young smartphone users were quantified for 8?hours continuously during a typical workday using a wearable sensor. Participants spent more time in larger head-down tilt postures (greater than 30°) when they were using their smartphones as compared to when they were not using them.     

Assessing the performance of short multi-item questionnaires in aesthetic evaluation of websites

In recent years, website aesthetics has received a fair amount of attention from the HCI community. This has led to the creation of a variety of multi-item questionnaires aimed at capturing users’ aesthetic judgments. Researchers have used these questionnaires in several HCI studies to investigate the relationship between aesthetics and other evaluative constructs such as usability. However, their usefulness as evaluation tools in visual design practice remains underexplored. Lengthy multi-item questionnaires can be particularly problematic especially in studies where participants must evaluate multiple designs or when they are required to give responses repeatedly in predefined time intervals. Despite the criticism, single-item scales have been used in many past studies in which questionnaire length could be problematic. Another alternative available to practitioners/researchers are short versions of standardised multi-item questionnaires that have been created for the aesthetic evaluations of websites. In this paper, we present a study in which we compare the performance of three such condensed aesthetic questionnaires (i.e. aesthetics scale, AttrakDiff, VisAWI) during a website redesign project. The short versions of those questionnaires were used by 187 users during an evaluation of 7 alternative website designs. The questionnaires were compared on performance criteria such as reliability, validity, and predictive ability. Data analysis showed that although AttrakDiff’s overall performance was better, a considerable amount of variance in aesthetic judgment could not be accounted for by any of the questionnaires.     

手机位置信息的保护和利用

高速发展的智能手机和无线网络将互联网推向了移动互联网的世界,众多手机操作系统和应用软件开发公司为了获取更多的资源,肆无忌惮地对手机用户的位置信息进行收集,广大用户如何对手机位置信息进行保护,以及如何利用好这些位置信息,本文中将进行探讨。     

Expressive and classical aesthetics: two distinct concepts with highly similar effect patterns in user–artefact interaction

This study examined the utility of the concept of expressive aesthetics by testing websites that did or did not match this concept. A website scoring highly on this concept was created and was then compared to websites that were either non-aesthetic or corresponded to the concept of classical aesthetics. Sixty website users of a broad age range (18–60 years) were allocated to three experimental groups (expressive, classical, and non-aesthetic) and asked to complete a series of information search tasks. During the experiment, measures were taken of performance, perceived usability, perceived aesthetics, emotion, and trustworthiness. The results showed that expressive aesthetics can be considered a distinct concept. It also emerged that the website scoring high on expressive aesthetics shows a similar pattern of results to classical aesthetics. Both aesthetically appealing websites received higher ratings of perceived usability and trustworthiness than the non-aesthetic website. The effects of website aesthetics on subjective measures were not moderated by age.