WP 9: Users & Usability Kristina “Kia” Höök

1. WP 9: Users & Usability Kristina “Kia” Höök Review meeting, 19-20 March 2007, Luxembourg

2. WP9: The area • Usability traditionally focuses on goals such as effectiveness, efficiency, safety, utility, learnability, and memorability • Affective interaction focus on user experience goals – subjective qualities such as being fun, rewarding, motivating, satisfying, enjoyable, and helpful • How do we design for user experiences – and make sure that it works? humainewp9: Users & Usability

3. In Situ Informants Think aloud Technical probes Persona Wizard of Oz Ethnography Design Cultural probes Sensual Evaluation Instrument In the Wild! Brainstorming Early testing: staged lived experiences Interpretation Design study Bodystorming Tiny fingers WP9: Through user-centred design methods Fantastic product! humainewp9: Users & Usability

4. Key achievements • New methods: • WoZ-environment • SEI • In Situ Informants • User studies: • In Situ Informants • Think aloud • Design work: Affective Diary humainewp9: Users & Usability

5. WoZ tool for ECAs humainewp9: Users & Usability

6. Key achievements • New methods: • WoZ-environment • SEI • In Situ Informants • User studies: • In Situ Informants • Think aloud • Design work: Affective Diary humainewp9: Users & Usability

7. Sensual Evaluation Instrument (SEI) humainewp9: Users & Usability

8. Key achievements • New methods: • WoZ-environment • SEI • In Situ Informants • User studies: • In Situ Informants • Think aloud • Design work: Affective Diary humainewp9: Users & Usability

9. In Situ Informants: in search of ecological validity in the wild humainewp9: Users & Usability

10. In Situ Informants: results • Support the fragile communication rhythm that friendships require – memories of the past, sharing the present and planning for the future • Emotions are not singular state that exist within one person alone, but permeates the total situation, changing and drifting as a process between the two friends communicating • Gained insights into the physical, sensual aspects of emotional communication and caused reflections • In situ informants method required involving study participants in the interpretation of the data and establishing a close connection with spectators humainewp9: Users & Usability

11. Key achievements • New methods: • SEI • WoZ-environment • In Situ Informants • User studies: • In Situ Informants • Think aloud • Design work: Affective Diary humainewp9: Users & Usability

12. Creating avatars for social computing: Insights from observations and users’ verbalizations Asimina Vasalou Tanja Bänziger humainewp9: Users & Usability

13. Results • Users moved across a conceptual space anchored on real life on one end and in fantasy on the other • Fantasy was used most of the time to reflect real life occurrences! humainewp9: Users & Usability

14. Where we are now • “Creating avatars for social computing: Insights from observations and users’ verbalizations” • Submitted to the International Journal of Human Computer Studies (1st of March, 2007) • Future work focuses on a second strand • Evaluate the think aloud methodology with a rating study to see whether users who “think aloud” give off expressive data that can be recognised by others. • First impressions are positive. However, in some instances, users show positive expressions while experiencing negative events e.g. irony. • We want to conclude with a checklist of methodological issues that practitioners can consult to make better experience assessments. humainewp9: Users & Usability

15. Key achievements • New methods: • SEI • WoZ-environment • In Situ Informants • User studies: • In Situ Informants • Think aloud • Design work: Affective Diary humainewp9: Users & Usability

16. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow To remember the past is not only meaningful in order to create and maintain your personal identity, but it can also in itself be a very pleasurable activity. [..] To keep the past registered can contribute to quality of life. It frees us from being enslaved by the present and makes it possible for our minds to visit the past. It makes it possible to choose and in our memory keep events that have been particularly pleasant and meaningful and thereby “create” a past that helps us to deal with the future. humainewp9: Users & Usability

17. … demo! humainewp9: Users & Usability

18. Example: Affective DiaryMeaning-making, reflection and change ”[pointing at the first slightly red character] And then I become like this, here I am kind of, I am kind of both happy and sad in some way and something like that. I like him and then it is so sad that we see each other so little. And then I cannot really show it.” humainewp9: Users & Usability

19. Affective Diary: Methods used • Cultural probes (Gaver et al) • Staged lived experiences with sensors and feedback (Iaccucci et al) • Iterations of design sketching, user testing and re-design • Evaluation in the wild! humainewp9: Users & Usability

20. Key achievements • Special issue of IJHCS on Evaluating Affective Interfaces, vol 65, issue 4, April 2007 • 28 submissions – 10 accepted papers • Span from cultural-constructivist accounts to biological/physical accounts • Workshops: • one at CHI 2005 • one in Stockholm January 2006 humainewp9: Users & Usability

21. Issues • Clash between different views: • User-centred, design-oriented perspective • Scientific, evaluation-oriented, theoretically-driven perspective • Also different views on emotion in interaction: • Interact, integrate with overall system purpose, emotion as a co-constructed, co-interpreted phenomenon – interactional view • Infer, diagnose, communicate, react – informational view humainewp9: Users & Usability

22. Key targets for last year of HUMAINE • More collaborations with other WPs • planned collaboration with WP8 • More design – evaluation cycles • interactive narratives studies • More integrative efforts • handbook is key! humainewp9: Users & Usability