Usage and user experience of communication before and during rendezvous

This paper reports a field evaluation of the mobile phone as a 'package' of device and services. The evaluation compares 44 university students' usage and user experience of communication before and during rendezvous. During a rendezvous (en route), students rated many aspects of the experience of phone use less favourably than before a rendezvous (prior to departure). This impairment of experience is attributed to the cumulative effect of various adverse factors that occur more often during rendezvous—incomplete network coverage, environmental noise, multiple task performance, time pressure, conflict with social norms, and conflict with preferred life-paths. Also, during a rendezvous, students were more likely to use the telephone, less likely to use e-mail, but equally likely to use text messaging, compared to before a rendezvous. This change in usage is attributed to the need to exchange and ground information almost instantly during a rendezvous. Implications for the design of 3G phones are discussed.     

An ethnography of communication approach to mobile product testing

Product testing of mobile communication technology has typically employed the same research methodologies that were traditionally applied to stationary technology. An approach that does not primarily rely on physical location to study mobile communication technologies is thus needed. The stable component of mobile communication technology is not physical space but human communication. Therefore, a research model is developed based on an ethnography of communication approach, which designates “talk” (i.e., symbolic communication) as the primary and essential unit of measurement while making stationary physical location secondary. This allows design teams to enter a user “speech community” anywhere. Eight participants tested both the stationary and mobile version of customer relationship management software for sales. All participants were professional salespeople, comprising a speech community. Users articulated their “local” speech community meaning systems in the form of scenarios of use, which can guide product design and marketing. The findings show that proof-of-concept testing of mobile versions of desktop software can be done in conjunction with the usability testing for stationary technology.     

Important context changes for talking and text messaging during homeward commutes

This paper models the suitability of homeward commutes as a context for talking on a mobile telephone and text messaging. Analysis of these models identifies when and where large changes in suitability frequently arise. To bring commuters the greatest benefits, these are the changes upon which future applications of context-sensitivity and awareness need to focus.     

Important context changes for talking and text messaging during homeward commutes

This paper models the suitability of homeward commutes as a context for talking on a mobile telephone and text messaging. Analysis of these models identifies when and where large changes in suitability frequently arise. To bring commuters the greatest benefits, these are the changes upon which future applications of context-sensitivity and awareness need to focus.     

UX Curve: A method for evaluating long-term user experience

The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product. So far, user experience studies have mostly focused on short-term evaluations and consequently on aspects relating to the initial adoption of new product designs. Nevertheless, the relationship between the user and the product evolves over long periods of time and the relevance of prolonged use for market success has been recently highlighted. In this paper, we argue for the cost-effective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. We propose a method called the “UX Curve” which aims at assisting users in retrospectively reporting how and why their experience with a product has changed over time. The usefulness of the UX Curve method was assessed in a qualitative study with 20 mobile phone users. In particular, we investigated how users’ specific memories of their experiences with their mobile phones guide their behavior and their willingness to recommend the product to others. The results suggest that the UX Curve method enables users and researchers to determine the quality of long-term user experience and the influences that improve user experience over time or cause it to deteriorate. The method provided rich qualitative data and we found that an improving trend of perceived attractiveness of mobile phones was related to user satisfaction and willingness to recommend their phone to friends. This highlights that sustaining perceived attractiveness can be a differentiating factor in the user acceptance of personal interactive products such as mobile phones. The study suggests that the proposed method can be used as a straightforward tool for understanding the reasons why user experience improves or worsens in long-term product use and how these reasons relate to customer loyalty.     

Developing and Verifying a Questionnaire for Evaluating User Value of a Mobile Device

User experience has become a major issue lately with user value as one of its key elements. This study proposes a method to evaluate user value using a questionnaire specialized for a mobile device such as smartphones. The questionnaire was developed considering elements of user value, product features, and context of use. Then, a case study with hundreds of participants was conducted via the Internet to verify and screen out questionnaire items in terms of reliability and validity. Finally, a total of 16 questionnaire items were selected for evaluating elements of user value, consisting of self‐satisfaction, pleasure, sociability, customer need, and attachment. The results of this study are expected to help understand potential users and select design alternatives.     

Developing Elements of User Experience for Mobile Phones and Services: Survey,Interview, and Observation Approaches

The term user experience (UX) encompasses the concepts of usability and affective engineering. However, UX has not been defined clearly. In this study, a literature survey, user interview and indirect observation were conducted to develop definitions of UX and its elements. A literature survey investigated 127 articles that were considered to be helpful to define the concept of UX. An in‐depth interview targeted 14 hands‐on workers in the Korean mobile phone industry. An indirect observation captured daily experiences of eight end‐users with mobile phones. This study collected various views on UX from academia, industry, and end‐users using these three approaches. As a result, this article proposes definitions of UX and its elements: usability, affect, and user value. These results are expected to help design products or services with greater levels of UX. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This article was published online on 20 October 2011. An error was subsequently identified. This notice is included in the online and print versions to indicate that both have been corrected 13 June 2013.     

How User Experience Changes over Time: A Case Study of Social Network Services

While interacting with a product or a service, people have diverse experiences, which constitute user experience (UX). In this study, the hierarchical dimensions of UX were considered, including overall UX, its elements (usability, affect, and user value) and their subelements. To determine how UX changes over time, the temporal changes of the influence of each element and subelement were analyzed. Twenty subjects participated in a longitudinal experiment by using a social network service (SNS). The most important element of UX changed from usability to user value after one week of use. These results suggest that adoption of an SNS occurs in two phases: a phase of affected by usability and a phase affected by user value. Identification of these phases and the systematic approach used in the study are expected to contribute to design and evaluation of new SNSs and other products and services.     

Evaluating the impact of proactivity in the user experience of a context-aware restaurant recommender for Android smartphones

Proactivity has recently gained much attention in the area of cyber physical systems as sensing the users’ real world environment is needed to achieve it. Proactive recommenders are a good example because they push recommendations to the user when the current situation seems appropriate, without explicit user request. Evaluating whether users would accept proactive recommendations, how to properly notify them and how to present recommended items are important research questions. In this article, we present the scenario related to a context-aware restaurant recommender for Android smartphones. Two options to achieve proactivity have been designed: a widget- and a notification-based solution. In addition, our mobile user interface includes a visualization of recommended items and allows for user feedback. The approach was evaluated in a survey among users with good results regarding usefulness and effectiveness. The results also showed that test users preferred the widget-based solution in terms of user experience.     

User experience and personal innovativeness: An empirical study on the Enterprise Resource Planning systems

Although user experience and personal innovativeness are two important factors in new technology adoption, there has been no prior study to test these factors with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) adoption. This paper investigates moderating roles of user experience on the relationship between the personal innovativeness and the ERP adoption motivations. This issue is important because if the user has more experience with the systems then the power of influence of personal innovativeness on ERP adoption motivation would be different. Thus, this paper tests these important insights of ERP systems adoption with the two different field samples with high (more than three years) and low (less than three years) user experience, based on the innovation diffusion theory, self determination theory, and different types of motivations such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The findings, based on the PLS analysis of the model using 107 ERP end users, show that there are clear moderating effects of user experience—such as impacts of personal innovativeness on ERP systems adoption motivations are higher in case of low user experience samples, as expected. Academic and practical implications are discussed in the paper based on these empirical findings.     

Motivating and achievement-eliciting pop-ups in online environments: A user experience perspective

The aim of the present research was to develop pop-up windows that motivate users and evoke a positive user experience. Several variants of achievement eliciting pop-ups were designed and tested on a real business-website. A pre-test examined the effectiveness of 24 combinations of pictures and words in eliciting achievement motivation. The strongest effects on user experience were found for pop-ups containing a congruent achievement-related picture and word. The three pop-up variants with the most positive ratings were employed in a subsequent experiment.The main experiment tested the effects of a sequence of three pop-ups that were presented on a website. We had three conditions with different display times of the sequence of pop-ups. They were presented to 78 website-users for either 1, 2 or 3 s, and compared to a control group on subsequent motivation-related ratings. The results demonstrated that the website was stronger associated with achievement motivation if pop-ups were presented for only 1 or 2 s, compared with 3 s or the control group. This indicates that short presentations of pop-ups could activate achievement motivation in users of learning and business websites. It could be an important design guideline to flash shorter pop-ups that make online environments more appealing to users.     

基于网络编码的手机用户群文件共享和同步

为了快速、准确的实现一跳范围内手机用户群的文件共享,以达到手机用户之间进行协同工作的目的,在Android操作平台上设计、实施了本系统。在系统中提出了基于网络编码的可靠广播算法来保证文件传输的可靠性和快速性,并通过基于机会编码的全网同步算法来实现任一时刻手机群中各节点文件同步。通过真实实验验证了系统中文件共享的时延并不会随着手机群中节点数目的增加而增加,文件同步时网络中数据量大幅度下降,因此相比并发共享等其它方法,系统提供了一种快速、可靠的手机群文件共享和同步方法。     

User requirements of mobile technology: results from a content analysis of user reviews

Advanced mobile technology continues to shape professional environments. Smart cell phones, pocket computers and laptop computers reduce the need of users to remain close to a wired information system infrastructure and allow for task performance in many different contexts. Among the consequences are changes in technology requirements, such as the need to limit weight and size of the devices. In the current paper, we focus on the factors that users find important in mobile devices. Based on a content analysis of online user reviews that was followed by structural equation modeling, we found four factors to be significantly related with overall user evaluation, namely functionality, portability, performance, and usability. Besides the practical relevance for technology developers and managers, our research results contribute to the discussion about the extent to which previously established theories of technology adoption and use are applicable to mobile technology. We also discuss the methodological suitability of online user reviews for the assessment of user requirements, and the complementarity of automated and non-automated forms of content analysis.     

User modeling in dialog systems: Potentials and hazards

In order to be capable of exhibiting a wide range of cooperative behavior, a computer-based dialog system must have available assumptions about the current user's goals, plans, background knowledge and (false) beliefs, i.e., maintain a so-called user model. Apart from cooperativity aspects, such a model is also necessary for intelligent coherent dialog behavior in general. This article surveys recent research on the problem of how such a model can be constructed, represented and used by a system during its interaction with the user. Possible applications, as well as potential problems concerning the advisability of application, are then discussed. Finally, a number of guidelines are presented which should be observed in future research to reduce the risk of a potential misuse of user modeling technology.     

User satisfaction aware routing and energy modeling of polymorphic network on chip architecture

In mobile devices, multiple applications contend for limited resources in the underlying embedded system framework. Application resource requirements in mobile systems vary by computation needs, energy consumption and user interaction frequency. Quality of service (QoS) is the predominant metric of choice to manage resources among contending applications. Resource allocation policies to support static QoS for applications do not reflect the changing demands of the user in contemporary network on chip (NoC) based embedded architectures. User satisfaction with the user interactions and user interface design ought to be the primary design driver. Some recent research has integrated a saturating, non-linear user satisfaction function in the application thread scheduler. The application and operating system level user satisfaction research assumes that the throughput of inter-thread edges is limited only by the computational constraints of the nodes. With NoC, however, NoC resource allocation policies play an important role in determining the inter-thread communication flow’s throughput and the resulting application level user satisfaction. In this paper, we filter down the user satisfaction from an application layer attribute to a router level attribute to improve the resource and energy utilization for routing in order to leverage the user satisfaction at the application and system level. We demonstrate that this technique improves the user satisfaction of audio (MP3) application by 10% while maintaining the user satisfaction of video (MPEG-2) application. Experiments also show that a fixed energy source can be extended for an average of 18% of the time using the NoC user satisfaction based energy optimization proposed in this research.     

Computer experience: a poor predictor of computer attitudes

Considerable research has focused on the relationship between computer experience and attitudes. This study aimed to identify those experience factors that are best able to predict computer attitudes. A questionnaire was designed to incorporate various measures of experience as defined by previous researchers. Reliability analyses were appropriate for both experience and attitude scales. Relationships between these constructs whilst significant (p<0.01) were at best moderate in magnitude, and experience factors were poor predictors of computer attitude scores. However, exploratory analyses showed that high levels of variance in the variable ‘computer confidence’ could be explained by quantifiable use data. It is concluded that current questionnaire scales inadequately reflect the many aspects of experience that contribute toward computer attitudes.     

Smartphone use during the leisure theme park visit experience: The role of contextual factors

Recent studies indicate the increasingly important role of smartphones in the customer experience. This research proposes and empirically validates a conceptual framework capturing the influence of five contextual factors on the types and intensity of smartphone use and therefore on the leisure experience during a theme park visit. A mixed research protocol combining an ethnographic approach, leisure experience narratives, and phenomenological interviews is constructed. Because of the secluded nature of theme parks, smartphones play a key role during downtime periods and thus allow visitors to enhance their leisure experience through relational and hedonic use.     

Product manual elaboration in product design phases: Behavioral and functional analysis based on user experience

In classical design methods, intuitive consideration is given to how the product, or the system that is the subject of the design, is used. How the product is used is defined in a product manual. It is taken into account in the final phase of the techno-centric process, which leads not only to modifications of the late design phases, but also to difficulties using the product. Product manual also helps businesses save significant staff training and customer service costs. Anthropocentric methods are rarely used by the general public, and are in fact too expensive. We propose to take product use into account by integrating behavioral analyses (the behavior of the product and of its user) with functional analyses. This will allow us to set out instructions for using the product right at the design stage. An analysis of techno- and anthropocentric approaches is presented in this work in a bid to position our approach. Next, a functional and behavioral analysis is proposed based on a car seat case study. The proposed method also calls for a phase dedicated to the collection of product use information and data on user feedback or legislatives data. These analyses are carried out using the QFD method in order to assist the designer in structuring knowledge, taking into account the functions of the product, the characteristics or criteria of its use, and the points to be developed when drawing up operating instructions.     

Exploring the wiki user experience: The effects of training spaces on novice user usability and anxiety towards wiki editing

With the advent of Web 2.0, the number of IT systems used in university courses is growing. Yet research consistently shows that a significant proportion of students are anxious about computer use. The quality of first experience with computers has been consistently mentioned as a significant contributor to anxiety onset. However the effect of users’ first experience on system related anxiety has not to the authors’ knowledge been researched using controlled experiments. Indeed little experiment based research has been conducted on the wiki user experience, specifically users’ evaluations and emotional reactions towards editing. This research uses usability engineering principles to engineer four different wiki experiences for novice wiki users and measures the effect each has on usability, anxiety during editing and on anxiety about future wiki editing. Each experience varied in the type of training spaces available before completing six live wiki editing tasks. We found that anxiety experienced by users was not related to computer anxiety but was wiki specific. Users in the in-built tutorial conditions also rated the usability of the editing interface higher than users in the non-tutorial conditions. The tutorial conditions also led to a significant reduction in wiki anxiety during interaction but did not significantly affect future editing anxiety. The findings suggest that the use of an in-built tutorial reduces emotional and technological barriers to wiki editing and that controlled experiments can help in discovering how aspects of the system experience can be designed to affect usability and anxiety towards editing wikis.