Marianna Obrist

User experience evaluation methods: current state and development needs

The recent shift of emphasis to user experience (UX) has rendered it a central focus of product design and evaluation. A multitude of methods for UX design and evaluation exist, but a clear overview of the current state of the available UX evaluation methods is missing. This is partly due to a lack of agreement on the essential characteristics of UX. In this paper, we present the results of our multi-year effort of collecting UX evaluation methods from academia and industry with different approaches such as literature review, workshops, Special Interest Groups sessions and an online survey. We have collected 96 methods and analyzed them, among other criteria, based on the product development phase and the studied period of experience. Our analysis reveals development needs for UX evaluation methods, such as early-stage methods, methods for social and collaborative UX evaluation, establishing practicability and scientific quality, and a deeper understanding of UX.

Opportunities for odor: experiences with smell and implications for technology

Technologies for capturing and generating smell are emerging, and our ability to engineer such technologies and use them in HCI is rapidly developing. Our understanding of how these technologies match the experiences with smell that people have or want to have is surprisingly limited. We therefore investigated the experience of smell and the emotions that accompany it. We collected stories from 439 participants who described personally memorable smell experiences in an online questionnaire. Based on the stories we developed 10 categories of smell experience. We explored the implications of the categories for smell-enhanced technology design by (a) probing participants to envision technologies that match their smell story and (b) having HCI researchers brainstorm technologies using the categories as design stimuli. We discuss how our findings can benefit research on personal memories, momentary and first time experiences, and wellbeing.

User experience evaluation: do you know which method to use?

High quality user experience (UX) has become a central competitive factor of product development in mature consumer markets. Although the term UX is widely used, the methods and tools for evaluating UX are still inadequate. This SIG session collects information and experiences about UX evaluation methods used in both academia and industry, discusses the pros and cons of each method, and ideates on how to improve the methods.

Usability and usage of iTV services: lessons learned in an Austrian field trial

How users experience interactive TV (iTV) is determined by various factors; usability is a major one. In industry, usability is often seen as the key element that determines acceptance of new technologies by users. We present some of the results of an MHP-based (Multimedia Home Platform) iTV field trial in Salzburg, Austria concerning usability issues and iTV usage. We give an introduction to the field trial and an overview of its methods to ensure usability of iTV services and to measure their use. We present results from a usability test, give design recommendations, and discuss whether using iTV is an active or a passive user experience.

Temporal, affective, and embodied characteristics of taste experiences: a framework for design

We present rich descriptions of taste experience through an analysis of the diachronic and synchronic experiences of each of the five basic taste qualities: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami. Our findings, based on a combination of user experience evaluation techniques highlight three main themes: temporality, affective reactions, and embodiment. We present the taste characteristics as a framework for design and discuss each taste in order to elucidate the design qualities of individual taste experiences. These findings add a semantic understanding of taste experiences, their temporality enhanced through descriptions of the affective reactions and embodiment that the five basic tastes elicit. These findings are discussed on the basis of established psychological and behavioral phenomena, highlighting the potential for taste-enhanced design.

Live-streaming changes the (video) game

Video games are inherently an active medium, without interaction a video game is benign. Yet there is a growing community of video game spectating that exists on the Internet, at events across the world and, in part, as traditional television broadcasts. In this paper we look at the different communities that have grown around video game spectating, the incentives of all stakeholders and the technologies involved. An interesting part of this phenomenon is its relation to the malleability of activity and passivity; video games are traditionally active but spectatorship brings an element of passivity, whereas television is traditionally passive but interactive television brings an element of activity. We explore this phenomenon based on selected examples and stimulate a discussion around how such understanding from the video game field could be interesting for interactive television.

Emotions Mediated Through Mid-Air Haptics

Touch is a powerful vehicle for communication between humans. The way we touch (how) embraces and mediates certain emotions such as anger, joy, fear, or love. While this phenomenon is well explored for human interaction, HCI research is only starting to uncover the fine granularity of sensory stimulation and responses in relation to certain emotions. Within this paper we present the findings from a study exploring the communication of emotions through a haptic system that uses tactile stimulation in mid-air. Here, haptic descriptions for specific emotions (e.g., happy, sad, excited, afraid) were created by one group of users to then be reviewed and validated by two other groups of users. We demonstrate the non-arbitrary mapping between emotions and haptic descriptions across three groups. This points to the huge potential for mediating emotions through mid-air haptics. We discuss specific design implications based on the spatial, directional, and haptic parameters of the created haptic descriptions and illustrate their design potential for HCI based on two design ideas.

Trends in the living room and beyond

Investigating the context home becomes more and more necessary for future developments of interactive TV services and of new interaction techniques. In this paper, findings from two ethnographic studies are presented. In these studies a new methodological variation of cultural probing called creative cultural probing (CCP) was developed. The aim of our research was to investigate activities and interaction techniques in the living room and beyond. In this paper, the results of the studies are presented and some major trends for the home context are highlighted. The studies indicate that supporting social interaction and personal activities as well as personalization, security and communication needs have to be addressed in the future more thoroughly.

Sensing the future of HCI: touch, taste, and smell user interfaces

Touch, taste, and smell are an underexplored design space in the context of interactive experiences. By understanding the ways in which our senses process information and how they relate to one another, it will be possible to create richer experiences for humantechnology interactions. We need to design interfaces that allow the stimulation of unexplored sensory inputs as well as interfaces that take into account the relationships between the senses. Digital Taste Interface is a method for simulating the sensation of taste by actuating the human tongue through electrical and thermal stimulation. AromaShooter is a smell-delivery device, contains six scent cartridges and connects to a computer via USB. Taste+ is an interface where the user can augment the flavors of food and beverages by applying weak and controlled electrical pulses on their tongue using electronically enhanced everyday utensils such as spoons and beverage bottles. It is crucial to determine the meaningful design space for multisensory interactive experiences. At the same time, it is also key to understand the unique properties of each sensory modality before designing for their sensory integration in the design of interactive systems.

Connecting TV & PC: an in-situ field evaluation of an unified electronic program guide concept

In-situ studies and evaluations are increasingly appreciated and requested by companies and developers. Direct feedback from the users is seen as important source to further improve a system, to make it usable, acceptable and useful to the users in a final stage. In this paper, we report the results from a conducted in-situ field study for a newly developed EPG (Electronic Program Guide) system. One of the main challenges of our research was to find the right methodological set up in order to gather direct and fast user feedback by bringing developers and users together in a real live setting. Thereby, it was important that the users could easily express their first impressions of the system in an engaging way. Based on our previous work, a creative and playful approach was selected and combined with a variation of the walkthrough method. In this paper we provide a description of the methods used, their combinations, and lessons learned throughout the one-week field study involving different stakeholders.