After treating the instrumental qualites from Mahlke’s model, it is time to describe the non-instrumental qualites. Mahlke describes these qualities as ‘the quality aspects of an interactive system that address user needs that go beyond tasks, goals and their efficient achievement’. Over the past few years, various dimensions of non-instrumental qualities were discussed. Four of […]

The most important instrumental quality is usability; a term that is used to denote that a design is ‘good’ from a HCI point of view. Many usability tests are available to test usability aspects after development. Next to that a great amount of design guidelines and heuristics are available to design for usability. These guidelines […]

It has been a while since my last post, so here is the start of a new series of posts. I’m currently preparing my second (and final) experiment where I’ll try to measure the effect of website interaction on emotional experience. I’m busy creating the stimuli (websites) for the test, which I enjoy doing as […]

Back from a great week of ice-skating, sun, fun, food and sauna I’ll present the setup of my first experiment.
The Objective of the experiment is to determine whether the two dimensions (arousal and value) as found in Russel’s work are sufficient to describe web experience. Van Gorp translated the dimensions pleasure-displeasure and activation-deactivation into pleasant-unpleasant […]

Marc Hassenzahl (2004) performed an interesting research on the interplay of beauty, goodness and usability in interactive products.
Hassenzahl explains user experience as the combination of product characters with personal expectations and standards. A product character is a bundle of attributes, such as innovative, comprehensible, or professional. The product character brings up expectations and exists of […]

At the moment I am preparing my first experiment in the development process of the tool. This experiment is mainly about the aesthetic appeal of the website and will be based on two previous studies. I will cover them both in short.
Attention web designers: you have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!
Lindgaard […]

Expressive facial reaction
The research area of facial expressions and emotions has a long history. In 1872 Darwin argued that certain emotional expressions are innate and the same for all people. Later evidence has indisputably shown that facial expressions are related to emotion both biologically and culturally. James and Tomkins promoted the idea that the feelings […]

Trevor van Gorp uses the psychological dimension of emotional states from Russell in his master thesis. In this project he uses emotion, arousal, attention and flow chaining emotional states to improve HCI.
Arousal & Performance
Arousal can be defined as the range between anxiety and boredom and is combined with the dimension of value. Positive affect promotes […]

Sylvia Tzvetanova is one of the few researchers I found that proposed a model of interface elements influencing web experience. She makes a distinction between insite factors and outsite factors. Insite factors are characteristics inside the website that may influence user’s emotion. Outsite factors are characteristics outside the website that may influence user’s emotion.
At the […]

Pieter Desmet’s model of product emotions is a model that explains the eliciting of emotions through five appraisal processes. It is cited in many papers relating to the subject of design for emotion and is therefore not easy to dismiss in this blog. At the basis of his model is Arnold’s cognitive perspective of emotion, […]