Virpi Roto

Understanding, scoping and defining user experience: a survey approach

Despite the growing interest in user experience (UX), it has been hard to gain a common agreement on the nature and scope of UX. In this paper, we report a survey that gathered the views on UX of 275 researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. Most respondents agree that UX is dynamic, context-dependent, and subjective. With respect to the more controversial issues, the authors propose to delineate UX as something individual (instead of social) that emerges from interacting with a product, system, service or an object. The draft ISO definition on UX seems to be in line with the survey findings, although the issues of experiencing anticipated use and the object of UX will require further explication. The outcome of this survey lays ground for understanding, scoping, and defining the concept of user experience.

Interaction in 4-second bursts: the fragmented nature of attentional resources in mobile HCI

When on the move, cognitive resources are reserved partly for passively monitoring and reacting to contexts and events, and partly for actively constructing them. The Re-source Competition Framework (RCF), building on the Multiple Resources Theory, explains how psychosocial tasks typical of mobile situations compete for cognitive resources and then suggests that this leads to the depletion of resources for task interaction and eventually results in the breakdown of fluent interaction. RCF predictions were tested in a semi-naturalistic field study measuring attention during the performance of assigned Web search tasks on mobile phone while moving through nine varied but typical urban situations. Notably, we discovered up to eight-fold differentials between micro-level measurements of atten-tional resource fragmentation, for example from spans of over 16 seconds in a laboratory condition dropping to bursts of just a few seconds in difficult mobile situations. By cali-brating perceptual sampling, reducing resources from tasks of secondary importance, and resisting the impulse to switch tasks before finalization, participants compensated for the resource depletion. The findings are compared to previous studies in office contexts. The work is valuable in many areas of HCI dealing with mobility.

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.

How people use the web on mobile devices

This paper describes a series of user studies on how people use the Web via mobile devices. The data primarily comes from contextual inquiries with 47 participants between 2004 and 2007, and is complemented with a phone log analysis of 577 panelists in 2007. We report four key contextual factors in using the Web on mobile devices and propose mobile Web activity taxonomy. The framework contains three user activity categories identical to previous stationary Web studies: information seeking, communication, and transaction, and a new category: personal space extension. The new category refers to the practice that people put their content on the Web for personal access, therefore extending their personal information space.

Minimap: a web page visualization method for mobile phones

The Web has become available even on mobile phones, but the current methods to view large pages on small screens have not been highly usable. Current mobile phone browsers reformat Web pages to a single column that fits the screen width. Because not all content is comprehensible in this format, browsers provide a second mode for viewing pages in the same layout as on a PC. We have developed a modeless Web page visualization method called Minimap that shows pages in a modified Original layout. We conducted a long-term usability study with 20 participants to compare the state-of-the-art mobile phone browser with this new method. 18 participants preferred the new method, and it also scored better in more detailed usability ratings.

Navigating in a mobile XHTML application

The Internet has been a great success in the fixed world, whereas WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), the mobile Internet, has not fulfilled its promise. However, now the analysts have started to believe in a rise of the mobile Internet again. WAP 2.0, with XHTML Mobile Profile as its standard language, will enable sites to function both in the fixed and wireless worlds. In this paper, we analyze different ways to navigate XHTML sites with mobile phones and base our analysis on two usability evaluations with a total of 30 subjects from various countries. The results show that due to limitations of mobile devices (the limited display size, pointing methods, and bandwidth), not all navigation guidelines of the fixed Internet are applicable to the mobile Internet. It is important for developers to realize the effect of these limitations in order to build usable XHTML sites also for mobile use.

Attitudes towards User Experience (UX) Measurement

Abstract 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.

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.

Need for non-visual feedback with long response times in mobile HCI

When browsing Web pages with a mobile device, the system response times are variable and much longer than on a PC. Users must repeatedly glance at the display to see when the page finally arrives, although mobility demands a Minimal Attention User Interface. We conducted a user study with 27 participants to discover the point at which visual feedback stops reaching the user in mobile context. In the study, we examined the deployment of attention during page loading to the phone vs. the environment in several different everyday mobility contexts, and compared these to the laboratory context. The first part of the page appeared on the screen typically in 11 seconds, but we found that the users visual attention shifted away from the mobile browser usually between 4 and 8 seconds in the mobile context. In contrast, the continuous span of attention to the browser was more than 14 seconds in the laboratory condition. Based on our study results, we recommend mobile applications provide multimodal feedback for delays of more than four seconds.

Identifying hedonic factors in long-term user experience

User experience (UX) arises from the users interaction with a product and its pragmatic and hedonic (pleasure) qualities. Until recently, UX evaluation has focused mainly on examining short-term experiences. However, as the user-product relationship evolves over time, the hedonic aspects of UX eventually seem to gain more weight over the pragmatic aspects. To this end, we have developed a UX Curve method for evaluating long-term user experience, particularly the hedonic quality. In this paper, we present a study in which the UX Curve was used to retrospectively evaluate the UX of Facebook and mobile phones. The results show that compared to a questionnaire, the UX Curve method is more effective for identifying the hedonic aspects of UX. This method can be used by practitioners and researchers who want to understand evolving UX and to design better products. This straightforward method is especially suited for industrial contexts where resources are limited.