Axel Platz

Hedonic and ergonomic quality aspects determine a software's appeal

The present study examines the role of subjectively perceived ergonomic quality (e.g. simplicity, controllability) and hedonic quality (e.g. novelty, originality) of a software system in forming a judgement of appeal. A hypothesised research model is presented. The two main research question are: (1) Are ergonomic and hedonic quality subjectively different quality aspects that can be independently perceived by the users? and (2) Is the judgement of appeal formed by combining and weighting ergonomic and hedonic quality and which weights are assigned? The results suggest that both quality aspects can be independently perceived by users. Moreover, they almost equally contributed to the appeal of the tested software prototypes. A simple averaging model implies that both quality aspects will compensate each other. Limitations and practical implication of the results are discussed.

Moving beyond assistance: psychological qualities of digital companions.

Digital assistant technologies are becoming increasingly common at home. These technologies also hold high potential through supporting individuals at work. However, it remains a challenge for research to understand which psychological features should be embodied by digital assistant technologies so that they can become meaningful everyday companions and contribute to users wellbeing. In this work, we conducted a focus group, a survey and an expert workshop to investigate user perceptions of digital assistants and explore how interactive technologies can be perceived as companions. We found that the design space of digital companions can be described as a spectrum between passive and active assistance. Further, users reported that assistant technologies can assume different roles (e.g. friend, advisor) connected to the task performed. Our findings contribute initial insights regarding psychological qualities of digital companions and highlight a number of important questions for future research.

Lessons on combining topology and geography: visual analytics for electrical outage management

Outage management in electrical networks is a complex task for operators and requires comprehensive overviews of the topology. At the same time valuable information for detecting the root cause may have geographical context such as digging activities or falling trees. Consequently, vendors of state-of-the-art SCADA systems started to integrate this valuable information source as well. However, in todays systems both views are separated, requiring operators to mentally connect the geographical and topological information. The wish of operators is to provide a comprehensive combination of both spaces in a single view. However, how to project geographical elements into the topology to support the workflow of real operators is yet unclear. In this paper, we present a design study for an interactive visualization system that provides a comprehensive overview for power grid operators. It provides full coverage of both spaces in order to measure how real operators make use of the geographical information. It bypasses the projection problem by interactive brushing-and-linking to support associative analysis. We extracted the mental-model of domain experts in real use cases and found a general bias source in sequential analysis of two spaces. We contribute our problem and task abstraction, lessons learned, and implications for future research.