Javier A. Bargas-Avila

Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience

This paper reviews how empirical research on User Experience (UX) is conducted. It integrates products, dimensions of experience, and methodologies across a systematically selected sample of 51 publications from 2005-2009, reporting a total of 66 empirical studies. Results show a shift in the products and use contexts that are studied, from work towards leisure, from controlled tasks towards open use situations, and from desktop computing towards consumer products and art. Context of use and anticipated use, often named key factors of UX, are rarely researched. Emotions, enjoyment and aesthetics are the most frequently assessed dimensions. The methodologies used are mostly qualitative, and known from traditional usability studies, though constructive methods with unclear validity are being developed and used. Many studies use self-developed questionnaires without providing items or statistical validations. We discuss underexplored research questions and potential improvements of UX research.

Visual complexity of websites: Effects on users' experience, physiology, performance, and memory

Visual complexity is an apparent feature in website design yet its effects on cognitive and emotional processing are not well understood. The current study examined website complexity within the framework of aesthetic theory and psychophysiological research on cognition and emotion. We hypothesized that increasing the complexity of websites would have a detrimental cognitive and emotional impact on users. In a passive viewing task (PVT) 36 website screenshots differing in their degree of complexity (operationalized by JPEG file size; correlation with complexity ratings in a preliminary study r=.80) were presented to 48 participants in randomized order. Additionally, a standardized visual search task (VST) assessing reaction times, and a one-week-delayed recognition task on these websites were conducted and participants rated all websites for arousal and valence. Psychophysiological responses were assessed during the PVT and VST. Visual complexity was related to increased experienced arousal, more negative valence appraisal, decreased heart rate, and increased facial muscle tension (musculus corrugator). Visual complexity resulted in increased reaction times in the VST and decreased recognition rates. Reaction times in the VST were related to increases in heart rate and electrodermal activity. These findings demonstrate that visual complexity of websites has multiple effects on human cognition and emotion, including experienced pleasure and arousal, facial expression, autonomic nervous system activation, task performance, and memory. It should thus be considered an important factor in website design.

Symmetry and aesthetics in website design: It's a man's business

In recent years the aesthetic appearance of user-interfaces has become a topic of increasing interest in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). At the same time, it is well known that there are gender-specific effects in HCI. The present study investigates the effect of web page symmetry by taking gender differences into account. A total of 60 people (30 male, 30 female) participated in a laboratory experiment, where 20 website startpages had to be rated regarding symmetry, intuitive beauty, classical and expressive aesthetics. Results show that vertical symmetry is an important factor in aesthetic website design. It has an impact on intuitive straightforward beauty appraisals and on classical and expressive aesthetics judgments. Asymmetrically designed web pages were considered to be less beautiful and achieved lower scores on the classical and expressive dimensions. Moreover, the study indicates that the symmetry effect only occurs among male participants: only men react unfavorably to asymmetrically designed websites, whereas womens judgments are not influenced by symmetry. These findings should be taken into consideration by website designers, especially when they aim to design for target audience consisting of a majority of a certain gender.

Beyond web content accessibility guidelines: Design of enhanced text user interfaces for blind internet users

Websites do not become usable just because their content is accessible. For people who are blind, the application of the W3Cs Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) often might not even make a significant difference in terms of efficiency, errors or satisfaction in website usage. This paper documents the development of nine guidelines to construct an enhanced text user interface (ETI) as an alternative to the graphical user interface (GUI). An experimental design with 39 blind participants executing a search and a navigation task on a website showed that with the ETI, blind users executed the search task significantly faster, committing fewer mistakes, rating it significantly better on subjective scales as well as when compared to the GUIs from other websites they had visited. However, performance did not improve with the ETI on the navigation task, the main reason presumed to be labeling problems. We conclude that the ETI is an improvement over the GUI, but that it cannot help in overcoming one major weakness of most websites: If users do not understand navigation labels, even the best user interface cannot help them navigate.

Location matters, especially for non-salient features-An eye-tracking study on the effects of web object placement on different types of websites

Users have clear expectations of where web objects are located on a web page. Studies conducted with manipulated, fictitious websites showed that web objects placed according to user expectations are found faster and remembered more easily. Whether this is also true for existing websites has not yet been examined. The present study investigates the relation between location typicality and efficiency in finding target web objects in online shops, online newspapers, and company web pages. Forty participants attended a within-subject eye-tracking experiment. Typical web object placement led to fewer fixations and participants found target web objects faster. However, some web objects were less sensitive to location typicality, if they were more visually salient and conformed to user expectations in appearance. Placing web objects at expected locations and designing their appearance according to user expectations facilitates orientation, which is beneficial for first impressions and the overall user experience of websites.

Is once enough?: on the extent and content of replications in human-computer interaction

A replication is an attempt to confirm an earlier studys findings. It is often claimed that research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) contains too few replications. To investigate this claim we examined four publication outlets (891 papers) and found 3% attempting replication of an earlier result. The replications typically confirmed earlier findings, but treated replication as a confirm/not-confirm decision, rarely analyzing effect sizes or comparing in depth to the replicated paper. When asked, most authors agreed that their studies were replications, but rarely planned them as such. Many non-replication studies could have corroborated earlier work if they had analyzed data differently or used minimal effort to collect extra data. We discuss what these results mean to HCI, including how reporting of studies could be improved and how conferences/journals may change author instructions to get more replications.

Simple but Crucial User Interfaces in the World Wide Web: Introducing 20 Guidelines for Usable Web Form Design

Most websites use interactive online forms as the main contact point between users and website owners (e.g. companies, governmental institutions, ect.). Therefore, a proper design of such forms is crucial to allow smooth information exchange. It can be decisive on the success or failure of an online transaction. Users mostly visit a website with an intention that is related to the content of that site (e.g. purchasing an article, gathering information). Hence, they do not visit a website with the intention or goal of filling in a web form. Let us illustrate this with an online shopping example: Once users have chosen the items that they wish to buy, they want to finish their shopping as quickly, easily and safely as possible. But to successfully complete the shopping process users have to provide some personal data such as shipping address or credit card information. In the users perception, an online form may be perceived as a hurdle. There is evidence that unusable web forms lead to customers aborting the transaction prematurely, resulting in loss of profit (Wroblewski, 2008). To prevent such dropouts from the buying process, a revision of the form is necessary. A successful redesign of a suboptimal online form may result in an increased completion rate in the range of 10%-40% (Wroblewski, 2008). For instance, the eBay User Experience and Design Group reported that a redesign of the eBay registration form made a significant contribution to eBay’s business and user success (Herman, 2004). The World Wide Web contains a wide range of different web form design solutions for similar interface aspects and problems. Exemplarily, Figure 1 shows four different ways of implementing and communicating format restrictions to users. It can be seen, that even website developers of major companies choose very different ways to solve the same problems. This raises several important questions: Are these solutions equivalent or are there ways that lead to superior web forms in terms of an enhanced usability? Would it not be advantageous to use similar solutions for similar problems, so that predictability for users can be increased? Are there different solutions that may be used depending on the developer’s intentions? In the last years a growing body of research and guidelines have been published on how to make online forms more usable. They answer to a certain extent the questions mentioned

Foci and blind spots in user experience research

INTRODUCTION In recent years, HCI has been influenced by a movement known as user experience. Take a look at current job postings and you cant help but notice that companies often look for “user experience specialists” (rather than “usability experts”) or “user experience designers” (rather than “interaction designers”). At conferences, an increasing number of papers describe “user experience” (rather than “usability”).

Building an interaction design pattern language: A case study

Interaction design patterns are a proven way to communicate good design. However, current pattern collections are not sufficiently powerful and generative to be used as a guide for designing an entire application such as those used in complex business environments. This study shows how we built and validated interaction design patterns that serve as the specification for the redesign of an application. Additionally, they were integrated into a pattern language, as a ruleset for human-computer interaction (HCI) non-professionals to continue development of the application. We demonstrate how individual phases in the redesign of an application can be matched with the process of creating an interaction design pattern language. To facilitate the writing of individual interaction design patterns as well as the development of the pattern language as a whole, a combination of user interviews, controlled experiments and analytical methods has been applied successfully.

The Role of Visual Complexity in Affective Reactions to Webpages: Subjective, Eye Movement, and Cardiovascular Responses

In this study, we tested whether the visual complexity (VC) of webpages influences viewers affective reactions. In a laboratory experiment, 48 students viewed 36 webpages varying in VC while subjective feelings, behavioral, and cardiovascular responses were recorded. Less complex webpages were associated with more positive affect, decreased eye movements (specifically in the first few seconds of viewing), a triphasic heart rate response, and increased finger pulse amplitude. Results suggest that affective responses to webpage viewing differ as a function of VC and that webpage displaying could be made adaptive to the users emotions.