User experience-a research agenda

Over the last decade, 'user experience' (UX) became a buzzword in the field of human - computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire. Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI. And, indeed, the term promises change and a fresh look, without being too specific about its definite meaning. The present introduction to the special issue on 'Empirical studies of the user experience' attempts to give a provisional answer to the question of what is meant by 'the user experience'. It provides a cursory sketch of UX and how we think UX research will look like in the future. It is not so much meant as a forecast of the future, but as a proposal - a stimulus for further UX research.     

Involving domain experts in assistive technology research

Teams engaging in assistive technology research should include expertise in the domain of disability itself, in addition to other areas of expertise that are more typical in human–computer interaction (HCI) research, such as computer science and psychology. However, unexpected problems can arise when HCI researchers do not adequately plan the involvement of domain experts in a research project. Although many research teams have included domain experts when designing assistive technologies, there has been little work published on how to best involve these experts in the research process. This paper is a first step towards filling that void. Based on the authors’ own experiences involving domain experts in research, as well as those documented in the literature, five types of domain experts and three broad roles that domain experts can play are identified, and five guidelines for their involvement are presented. This analysis will be useful to anyone in the assistive technology and universal accessibility communities, especially those who are in the early stages of conducting research in this area. It is intended to lay the foundation of best practices for involving domain experts in assistive technology research.     

Attitudes towards user experience (UX) measurement

User experience (UX), as a recently established research area, is still haunted by the challenges of defining the scope of UX in general and operationalising experiential qualities in particular. To explore the basic question whether UX constructs are measurable, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 UX researchers from academia and one UX practitioner from the industry where a set of questions in relation to UX measurement were explored (Study 1). The interviewees expressed scepticism as well as ambivalence towards UX measures and shared anecdotes related to such measures in different contexts. Interestingly, the results suggested that design-oriented UX professionals tended to be sceptical about UX measurement. To examine whether such an attitude prevailed in the HCI community, we conducted a survey – UX Measurement Attitudes Survey (UXMAS) – with essentially the same set of 13 questions used in the interviews (Study 2). Specifically, participants were asked to rate a set of five statements to assess their attitude towards UX measurement, to identify (non)measurable experiential qualities with justifications, and to discuss the topic from the theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives. The survey was implemented in a paper-based and an online format. Altogether, 367 responses were received; 170 of them were valid and analysed. The survey provided empirical evidence on this issue as a baseline for progress in UX measurement. Overall, the survey results indicated that the attitude towards UX measurement was more positive than that identified in the interviews, and there were nuanced views on details of UX measurement. Implications for enhancing the acceptance of UX measures and the interplay between UX evaluation and system development are drawn: UX modelling grounded in theories to link experiential qualities with outcomes; the development of UX measurement tools with good measurement properties, and education within the HCI community to disseminate validated models, and measurement tools as well as their successful applications. Mutual recognition of the value of objective measures and subjective accounts of user experience can enhance the maturity of this area.     

A Textual Feedback Tool for Empowering Participants in Usability and UX Evaluations

The usability movement has historically always sought to empower end-users of computers so that they understand what is happening and can control the outcome. In this article, we develop and evaluate a “Textual Feedback” tool for usability and user experience (UX) evaluation that can be used to empower well-educated but low-status users in UX evaluations in countries and contexts with high power distances. The proposed tool contributes to the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community’s pool of localized UX evaluation tools. We evaluate the tool with 40 users from two socio-economic groups in real-life UX usability evaluations settings in Malaysia. The results indicate that the Textual Feedback tool may help participants to give their thoughts in UX evaluation in high power distance contexts. In particular, the Textual Feedback tool helps high status females and low status males express more UX problems than they can with traditional concurrent think aloud (CTA) alone. We found that classic concurrent think aloud UX evaluation works fine in high power contexts, but only with the addition of Textual Feedback to mitigate the effects of socio-economic status in certain user groups. We suggest that future research on UX evaluation look more into how to empower certain user groups, such as low status female users, in UX evaluations done in high power distance contexts.     

Citizen Science: New Research Challenges for Human–Computer Interaction

Citizen science broadly describes citizen involvement in science. Citizen science has gained significant momentum in recent years, brought about by widespread availability of smartphones and other Internet and communications technologies (ICT) used for collecting and sharing data. Not only are more projects being launched and more members of the public participating, but more human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers are focusing on the design, development, and use of these tools. Together, citizen science and HCI researchers can leverage each other’s skills to speed up science, accelerate learning, and amplify society’s well-being globally as well as locally. The focus of this article is on HCI and biodiversity citizen science as seen primarily through the lens of research in the author’s laboratory. The article is framed around five topics: community, data, technology, design, and a call to save all species, including ourselves. The article ends with a research agenda that focuses on these areas and identifies productive ways for HCI specialists, science researchers, and citizens to collaborate. In a nutshell, while species are disappearing at an alarming rate, citizen scientists who document species’ distributions help to support conservation and educate the public. HCI researchers can empower citizen scientists to dramatically increase what they do and how they do it.     

Culture and HCI: a review of recent cultural studies in HCI and social networks

Studies on culture in HCI have always drawn the attention of academics. A comprehensive literature review of recent HCI studies on culture becomes a necessity. This study followed a systematic approach to review and create taxonomy of recent literature on culture from various HCI disciplines and how that relates to Social Networks. Most of the literature review focuses on recent studies on culture published in the last 5 years. The literature review reveals that understanding cultural values of people requires deep research. It highlights the complications of culture when it comes to interface design and makes some recommendations on designing more acceptable user interfaces. Understanding cultural values is essential for the design of successful and widely accepted user interfaces. The attempt of this study is to increase cultural awareness of people involved in international or cross-cultural HCI projects.     

Usability and user experience of medical devices: An overview of the current state,analysis methodologies,and future challenges

Improvements to the reliability and safety of medical devices are vital for healthcare systems. It is necessary to consider the user experience (UX) of patients and healthcare professionals at all the development stages of medical devices. Ergonomic design principles can also reduce the cost of medical device production. This study is a multilateral analytical literature review of UX and usability issues in healthcare and medical device design. The total number of literature sources presented is n = 88. The literature sources are classified according to the difference between UX and usability for various target products and services, including healthcare. The literature is reviewed with a focus on human-oriented aspects. This includes medical technology and device design, which are dependent on the user type, medical device scope, and area of use. A review of key medical device standards and regulation documents is presented. The main analysis methodologies for the UX and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. The future challenges in healthcare and medical ergonomics are briefly highlighted. Above all, this study tried to examine the difference between usability and UX of general products and those of medical devices through the review of existing literature. Even standards do not reflect this well and need to be considered based on further research in academia and industry.Relevance to industryThe obtained results will help medical-device designers and healthcare professionals understand the main medical-research trends and improve the design process. Additionally, they will be helpful for increasing the satisfaction level among medical-device users and reducing user risks.     

Collectivistic health promotion tools: Accounting for the relationship between culture,food and nutrition

Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers are increasingly examining how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can help people eat more healthfully. However, within HCI, there has been little examination of the way that cultural values influence how people think about food and wellness, and how sociocultural context supports or impedes attempts to eat healthfully. Our work focuses on the diet-related health challenges of African Americans within low-income neighborhoods. This population disproportionately experiences diet-related disease, and as such, researchers have consistently advocated research that examines the way in which food practices are culturally situated.Through formative focus groups with 46 participants we identified several design implications for tools that promote healthy eating while accounting for collectivism, a cultural value often ascribed to the African American population. Based on our design implications we developed, deployed and evaluated two systems that supported the sharing of community-held knowledge about making healthy eating decisions. In our discussion, we present implications for the design of collectivistic systems that address food practices. We conclude with recommendations for HCI research that investigates the relationship between culture and food more broadly.     

An Architecture Supporting Intelligent Mobile Healthcare Using Human-Computer Interaction HCI Principles

Recent advancements in the Internet of Things IoT and cloud computing have paved the way for mobile Healthcare (mHealthcare) services. A patient within the hospital is monitored by several devices. Moreover, upon leaving the hospital, the patient can be remotely monitored whether directly using body wearable sensors or using a smartphone equipped with sensors to monitor different user-health parameters. This raises potential challenges for intelligent monitoring of patient’s health. In this paper, an improved architecture for smart mHealthcare is proposed that is supported by HCI design principles. The HCI also provides the support for the User-Centric Design (UCD) for smart mHealthcare models. Furthermore, the HCI along with IoT`s (Internet of Things) 5-layered architecture has the potential of improving User Experience (UX) in mHealthcare design and help saving lives. The intelligent mHealthcare system is supported by the IoT sensing and communication layers and health care providers are supported by the application layer for the medical, behavioral, and health-related information. Health care providers and users are further supported by an intelligent layer performing critical situation assessment and performing a multi-modal communication using an intelligent assistant. The HCI design focuses on the ease-of-use, including user experience and safety, alarms, and error-resistant displays of the end-user, and improves user’s experience and user satisfaction.     

Ergonomics action research I: shifting from hypothesis testing to experiential learning

This paper presents the case for the need for ‘Action Research’ (AR) approaches to gain understanding of how ergonomics considerations can best be integrated into the design of new work systems. The AR researchers work collaboratively with other stakeholders to solve a real-world problem: gaining insight into the problem and factors influencing solution building from an embedded position in the development process. This experience is interpreted in terms of available theory and can support further theory development. This non-experimental approach can help provide practical new approaches for integrating ergonomics considerations into real work system design processes. The AR approach suffers from a lack of acceptance by conventionally trained scientists. This paper aims to help overcome this weakness by developing the underlying theory and rationale for using AR approaches in ergonomics research. We propose further development of hybrid approaches which incorporate other evaluation techniques to extend the knowledge gains from AR projects.

Practitioner Summary: Researchers should engage directly with organisations in ergonomics projects so that they can better understand the challenges and needs of practitioners who are trying to apply available scientific knowledge in their own unique context. Such ‘Action Research’ could help develop theory and approaches useful to improve mobilisation and application of ergonomics knowledge in organisations.     

Methodology for materiality: interaction design research through a material lens

Increasingly, human–computer interaction (HCI) is acknowledging the material dimensions of our subject. In doing so, a wide repertoire of methods is currently being explored for conducting interaction design research through a material lens. These methods range from material studies and studies in material cultures to methods borrowed from craft, designerly approaches to interaction design, sketching in hardware approaches, and so on. While we acknowledge these important attempts to approach the material dimensions of interaction design, it should also be noted that there is a lack of more systematic studies of methods that are, can be, or have been applied within HCI and interaction design to specifically explore interaction design through a material lens. So, there is a need for a methodology that acts as a guideline to material-centered interaction design research. In this paper, we address this need. More specifically, this paper contributes to this current state by presenting a methodology for methodological explorations in material-centered interaction design research. The development of this proposed methodology takes a point of departure in the methods available and applied so far. With grounding in design theory, this paper organizes these methods into a four-dimensional structure to guide deliberate choices of methods in different phases of interaction design research projects—that is, it serves as a framework for research design. The organizing structure for the proposed methodology follows the simple dialectic tradition in design to work back and forth between details and wholeness, materials and textures. In this paper, we describe the four dimensions of our framework and how these can be useful to guide research design aimed at advancing our understanding of the material dimensions of HCI. We illustrate how the proposed structure can be practically useful—both in advancing our studies of interaction design through a material lens and show how it brings us back to the roots of our profession—that is, back to a focus on the materials, the fundamental components of any computational composition.     

Establishing criteria of rigour and relevance in interaction design research

Interaction design research is a unique discipline embracing practicing professionals, design educators and academic researchers, but attracting attention from people with different backgrounds and interests has lead to the question of what constitutes ‘good research’. What is rigorous and relevant interaction design research and how do we recognise and evaluate it? Most current attempts at dealing with these issues tend to be on loan from other disciplines, and may overlook, conceal, or knowingly exclude some of what makes interaction design research such a unique field. Our primary contribution is that what may be perceived as three different design research activities—design practice, design exploration and design studies—have their own purposes, intended outcomes, and internal logic. Each approach must be examined in its own right and the notions of rigour and relevance have to be based on a firm understanding of the particular purpose of each approach.     

Design for experience innovation: understanding user experience in new product development

In providing a better experience to users in terms of product usage, we focus on the important concept of a user-centred design (UCD), and explore a new approach to user experience (UX), with the effort to understand experience-driven innovation. Based on the conceptual framework of experiential network and the results of multiple case studies covering 643 successfully designed products or services providing an optimised UX, we categorise the UX context into the following four representative types: individualisation, combination, integration, and ecosystem. Furthermore, we identify the essential UCD concepts that reflect the core needs and expectations of users in each of the designed contexts, that is, specialty, usefulness, usability, and fluency. Finally, we discuss the dynamic concepts that help achieve a successful experience innovation. We expect these findings to play a crucial role in the development of novel design concepts or strategies, not only to better understand the needs of contemporary users, but also to better understand the dynamics of innovation.     

Investigating and promoting UX practice in industry: An experimental study

The efforts of addressing user experience (UX) in product development keep growing, as demonstrated by the proliferation of workshops and conferences bringing together academics and practitioners, who aim at creating interactive software able to satisfy their users. This special issue focuses on “Interplay between User Experience Evaluation and Software Development”, stating that the gap between human-computer interaction and software engineering with regard to usability has somewhat been narrowed. Unfortunately, our experience shows that software development organizations perform few usability engineering activities or none at all. Several authors acknowledge that, in order to understand the reasons of the limited impact of usability engineering and UX methods, and to try to modify this situation, it is fundamental to thoroughly analyze current software development practices, involving practitioners and possibly working from inside the companies. This article contributes to this research line by reporting an experimental study conducted with software companies. The study has confirmed that still too many companies either neglect usability and UX, or do not properly consider them. Interesting problems emerged. This article gives suggestions on how they may be properly addressed, since their solution is the starting point for reducing the gap between research and practice of usability and UX. It also provides further evidence on the value of the research method, called Cooperative Method Development, based on the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in carrying out empirical research; it has been used in a step of the performed study and has revealed to be instrumental for showing practitioners why to improve their development processes and how to do so.     

Intelligent interaction design: the role of human-computer interaction research in the design of intelligent systems

As more intelligent systems are introduced into the marketplace, it is becoming increasingly urgent to consider usability for such systems. Historically, the two fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and human- computer interaction (HCI) have had little in common. In this paper, we consider how established HCI techniques can usefully be applied to the design and evaluation of intelligent systems, and where there is an urgent need for new approaches. Some techniques - notably those for requirements acquisition and empirical evaluation - can usefully be adopted, and indeed are, within many projects. However, many of the tools and techniques developed within HCI to support design and theory-based evaluation cannot be applied in their present forms to intelligent systems because they are based on inappropriate assumptions; there is consequently a need for new approaches. Conversely, there are approaches that have been developed within AI - e.g. in research on dialogue and on ontologies - that could usefully be adapted and encapsulated to respond to this need. These should form the core of a future research agenda for intelligent interaction design.     

A change management framework for macroergonomic field research

With the proliferation of macroergonomic field research, it is time to carefully examine how such research should be managed and implemented. We argue that the importance of attending to high-quality implementation of field research is equal to that of methodological rigor. One way to systematically manage the implementation process is to adopt a change management framework, wherein the research project is conceptualized as an instance of organization-level change. Consequently, principles for successful organization-level change from the literature on change management can be used to guide successful field research implementation. This paper briefly reviews that literature, deriving 30 principles of successful change management, covering topics such as political awareness, assembling the change team, generating buy-in, and management support. For each principle, corresponding suggestions for macroergonomic field research practice are presented. We urge other researchers to further develop and adopt frameworks that guide the implementation of field research.     

Aspects of HCI research for older people

HCI research has come of age, and now is a good time to reflect upon the HCI research processes that have become established over the years. This paper examines the HCI research process itself with respect to funding opportunities and the methods used for empirical research, assessing in particular the efficacy of standard methods for research dissemination. The focus of the paper is HCI research for older people. The nature of this user group is explored, and Alexandrian patterns are proposed both as a means of dissemination of research results and for strengthening the framework of HCI knowledge.     

Influence, discretion and time available: a case study of HCI practice in software development

In the field of human-computer interaction, reports of the involvement of its practitioners in system development projects are rarely available for general scrutiny. The paper draws upon the experience of an HCI team at work within a large collaborative software development project. This experience of four years of HCI practice suggests three key, interdependent, factors that are central to the effectiveness of HCI input. The factors are influence, discretion and time available, and are discussed in the context of other report, of the role of HCI practitioners in the field. A number of issues are identified about the nature and scope of HCI in practice. The experience reported is relevant to software development in general, particularly where there are several groups working, sometimes in different sites, towards a unified outcome.     

Designing generic algorithms for operations research

Design solutions have been proposed to implement generic data structures, however such techniques dedicated to algorithms are not well known. This article discusses various recurrent problems encountered when designing reusable, extensible algorithms for operations research. It explains how to use object‐oriented concepts and the notion of genericity to design algorithms that are independent of the data structures and the algorithms they use, but that can still interact deeply with them. An object‐oriented design is sometimes considered to be less efficient than a classical one, and operations research is one of these scientific fields where efficiency really matters. Hence, the main goal of this article is to explain how to design algorithms that are both generic and efficient. It also discusses specific recurring design issues for operations research software and proposes solutions that improve the genericity of the algorithms. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.