Johanna M. Silvennoinen

Visual-manual in-car tasks decomposed: text entry and kinetic scrolling as the main sources of visual distraction

Distraction effects of in-car tasks with a touch screen based navigation system user interface were studied in a driving simulator experiment with eye tracking. The focus was to examine which particular in-car task components visually distract drivers the most. The results indicate that all of the visual-manual in-car tasks led to increased levels of experienced demands and to lower driving speeds. The most significant finding was that text entry and kinetic scrolling of lists were the main sources of visual distraction whereas simple selection tasks with familiar target locations led to least severe distraction effects.

Apperception as a multisensory process in material experience

Visual perspective has dominated experience research in human-technology interaction for decades now. The neglect of other sensory modalities is gradually being addressed by scholars and designers, who investigate user experience based on touch, smell, taste, sound and even expressive bodily interactions. In cognitive and affective processes, user experience is always multi-modal, not just regarding perceived multi-sensory information, but also while perceiving through one modality we mentally construct information relevant to the other senses. This article reports the results of an experiment, where participants (N = 52) appraised materials either only by touching them or only by seeing. The results indicate that with certain affects, the logic of the appraisal depends on the modality. These results are discussed within the theoretical framework of mental content, apperception, and appraisal. Further, we discuss the relevance of the findings for material design, especially in the context of multimodal interaction.

Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Usability in Four Icon Design Eras

Technological artefacts express time periods in their visual design. Due time, visual culture changes and thus affects the design of pictorial representations in technological products, such as icons in user interfaces. Previous research of temporal aspects in human-computer interaction has been focusing on particular interaction situations, but not on the effects of design eras on user experience. The influence of icon design styles of different eras on aesthetic and usability experiences was studied with the method of primed product comparisons. Affective preferences and their processing times were analysed in order to examine visual usability in terms of semantic distance and aesthetic appeal of icons from different design eras. Aesthetic and usability preferences of icons from different eras varied, which allowed the investigation of the process in which users experience icons. This examination results in elaborating the process, for example the relationship between cognitive processing fluency, familiarity, and beauty.

Appraisals of Salient Visual Elements in Web Page Design

Visual elements in user interfaces elicit emotions in users and are, therefore, essential to users interacting with different software. Although there is research on the relationship between emotional experience and visual user interface design, the focus has been on the overall visual impression and not on visual elements. Additionally, often in a software development process, programming and general usability guidelines are considered as the most important parts of the process. Therefore, knowledge of programmers’ appraisals of visual elements can be utilized to understand the web page designs we interact with. In this study, appraisal theory of emotion is utilized to elaborate the relationship of emotional experience and visual elements from programmers’ perspective. Participants N=50 used 3E-templates to express their visual and emotional experiences of web page designs. Content analysis of textual data illustrates how emotional experiences are elicited by salient visual elements. Eight hierarchical visual element categories were found and connected to various emotions, such as frustration, boredom, and calmness, via relational emotion themes. The emotional emphasis was on centered, symmetrical, and balanced composition, which was experienced as pleasant and calming. The results benefit user-centered visual interface design and researchers of visual aesthetics in human-computer interaction.

Cross-Cultural Factors in Experiencing Online Video Contents in Product Marketing

Althoughonlineshopsrepresentconvenienttoolstobuyandsellproducts,theydonotofferasrich multisensoryexperiencesthanphysicalretailingoffers.Audio-visualcontentscouldprovidedynamic multisensoryinformationandoffermoreengagingexperiences.However,tobesuccessful,audiovisualcontentsneedtobeadjustedtotheculturalcharacteristicsoftheusers.Thismanuscriptpresents astudyinwhichSpanishandFinnishparticipantsinteractedwithaudiovisualproductsdepicting videosof thebranddesign.Throughcontent analysisofparticipants’verbalizations, theauthors identifiedcategoriesandsubcategoriesthatdefinedtherepresentationof thevideoelementsand theirrelativeweightdependingontheculturalbackgroundoftheviewer.Althoughresultsindicate commonelementsaffectingviewersofthetwocountries,theydifferintherelativeweighttoglobal aestheticsfeatures.Theresultsofthisstudycanbeutilizedindesigningaudio-visualrepresentations ofproductsforonlineshopstakingintoaccounttheculturalfactorsaffectingthedesignpractice. KEywORDS Aesthetics, Advertisement, Audiovisual Experience, Cross-Cultural, Online Video

Beyond MAYA for game-changing multisensory design

With information technology becoming ever more embedded in our surrounding everyday things, the nature of interactions and the way we experience digitalization is becoming increasingly embodied. Thus, growing effort is placed on examining the multisensory nature of interaction experience. From a design perspective, increased knowledge of how people experience materials and how to design to encourage varying material experiences opens new opportunities for the generation of rich multisensory user experience, and accomplishing game-changing results. In particular, the innovation space opened up by understanding peoples material expectations of designs is significant. An experiment (N = 78) was conducted to examine how people appraised materials via touch and sight. There were three groups: sight, touch, and touch and sight. Here, we focus on a task connecting the materials to five design contexts according to appropriate, inventive and inappropriate. Results reveal the potential in harnessing the least expected and desired connections between material and design application, for creating imaginative multisensory experiences.

Creative interpretation in web design experience

Abstract Insight into how people mentally represent, and thus, make sense of visual designs is the key to understanding how people interact with technological devices. This paper presents a study in which participants were asked to write their interpretations of two webpage design examples, based on what they thought they would say and what would remain as a thought. The data comprised 80 3E templates (N = 40), a template allowing participants to express experiences through writing and drawing. Inductive data analysis through a phenomenological lens revealed that supposed mental and verbal representations concentrated on the following design properties: colors, themes, interface layout and quality, which are further reflected in terms of visual usability, aesthetic evaluations, emotions and physical feelings. Representations of themes functioned as the unifying components of the visual experience. Involvement through curiosity and strategic operationalisation of ambiguity are identified as direct design implications of the study.

Interactive map interface for controlling bridge crane automation: a cognitive-affective approach

This study outlines the development process of a new touch screen based user interface for controlling bridge crane automation in industrial environments. A user study of existing situation (n1 = 11) was used to develop an understanding of the cognitive and emotional design goals for crane operation. Conceptualization of these goals in the context of automation produced a set of requirements, which were used to develop a map-based touch screen user interface. Two field tests (n2 = 5, n3 = 5) revealed how bridge crane operators cognise and emotionally experience the increasing automation and how the user interface should be designed to support the operators spatial mental representation as well as their feeling of competence, trust and anxiety avoidance.

Affective contents of cross-cultural audiovisual experience

Audiovisual presentation of a product has a direct impact on the mental representation of an individual when interacting with a product. Companies produce audiovisual contents that can be used in different cultural environments as a way of having broader impact at a cheaper cost. But do video contents have the same impact in different countries? We addressed this question by using images and videos of Iittala products (Finnish design) with the goal of finding whether participants from two countries, Finland and Spain, appraised the designs similarly. We performed an experiment in which participants interacted with three audiovisual products depicting images/videos of the brand design. Through content analysis, we identified four main categories that defined the representation of the product and their relative weight depending on nationality and the type of presentation (image/video). The results indicate common elements of audiovisual product that affects viewers of two different countries.