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, […]