The holistic user experience (UX) is comprised of both pragmatic and hedonic qualities and encompasses both product-centric and service-type experiences. Currently there is no questionnaire that measures the holistic UX for both types of experiences, and, without one, it is not possible to measure multimodal experiences that cross between experience types within the same extended experience. To address this need, the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), originally designed to measure product-centric experiences, was generalized to work for both product-centric and service-type experiences in a variant called the Generalized User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ-G). In a first study, the UEQ-G was tested alongside the UEQ in legacy, product-centric scenarios. Participants were asked to test two mobile applications and then evaluate them using either the UEQ-G or the UEQ. The performance of both questionnaires was indistinguishable, and the UEQ-G was found to be an appropriate tool for evaluating product-centric scenarios. In a second study, the UEQ-G was tested in service-type scenarios where, in each scenario, there were two conditions for which a UEQ-G factor was designed to be either high or low depending on the scenario condition. Participants were asked to observe a scenario video in either the high or low condition and then complete a series of five questionnaires that included the UEQ-G. Each of the UEQ-G factors was found to be sensitive to differences in scenario conditions; however, a question was left unanswered about the stimulation factor’s validity. In a final study, the UEQ-G was used to evaluate multimodal experiences in the wild. Participants were asked to order food using the Chickil-A® mobile app and then go to the restaurant to pick up their orders. Upon their return, participants were asked to complete the same series of questionnaires from the second study including the UEQ-G. Results indicated that the UEQ-G was able to detect both hedonic and pragmatic qualities within the multimodal experience and that the vast majority of the relationships seen in the second study were also seen in the third. Through these studies, the UEQ-G demonstrated potential as a questionnaire for measuring the holistic UX in multimodal experiences.

UX-related issues is one type of issue that customer support is facing. This thesis project investigates the possibility to look at support cases as a source of insight to how users interact with an information system application at an ERP company. It is also investigated if it is possible to use this gathered information when further developing the product. Support case data are gone through in order to map what type of problems the users are encountering and a category structure is developed based on this information. The categorization framework is evaluated by letting employees test the structure by categorizing incidents in to different categories. Further data collection are gathered by a questionnaire and follow-up interviews with the classification participants. To evaluate the value in the support case information, employees with product responsibility are also interviewed to get insight from their perspective. The result from the evaluation of the category structure indicated that it wasn’t easy to make a categorization of incidents. The incidents were placed in different categories and in order to apply a category structure it would need further evaluation before applying in large scale. The information in support cases are concluded to be valuable. The collection of information related to where users are encountering problem and also how many are experiencing the same issue could serve as a basis when prioritizing the product backlog. A mapping of issues could justify resources spent on usability by showing business value based on the presumed impact.

Many within the industry, including designers, recognize the need to consider UX as the key to designing new products and services. As a consequence of this, the territory of UX has extended into many different industries and different disciplines. However, some practitioners still claim a UX project does not pay off even if they have improved UX. This way of thinking is induced from an old issue of UX. The term itself does not have a clear theoretical definition and it even makes a contradiction of itself. This phenomenon further aggravates the issue. The rapid expansion of UX territory made a gap between academia and practitioners. This research attempts to measure and examine the gap between academia and practitioners. A survey was conducted to observe how aware practitioners are of UX and their ability to recognize it as compared to the recent academia’s research.

Within society Information Technology (IT) is becoming pervasive. This is no more pronounced than in Higher Education where IT is almost ubiquitously used. Current developments have also seen Web 2.0 tools such as wikis being used in pedagogical contexts. Research in computer anxiety has identified that quality of initial experience may be important in the onset of anxiety towards IT. However the concept of computer anxiety is too vague to reflect likely reactions to specific IT scenarios especially in interactions with social technology such as wikis. Although wikis are growing in popularity little is known about users‟ emotional reaction towards contributing to them, how their experiences shape these emotions as well as the users‟ view of usability above that mentioned in qualitative research. Due to the interface, social and flexible nature of wikis users may be anxious towards editing. This research aims to offer causal insight into the influence of wiki site design characteristics on anxiety towards wiki editing and users usability evaluation of wiki editing experiences. Three experiment-based studies are presented addressing the effects of site characteristics such as in-built training spaces (i.e. tutorials and sandboxes commonly used on wikis), user editing identity as well as aspects inherent to wiki sites such as content flexibility, on anxiety felt by users in editing scenarios and users usability rating of their editing experiences. The research also aimed to identify whether initial experiences affected anxiety about further editing, as suggested by computer anxiety research, or whether emotions are only affected during editing experience. The findings of the initial study on in-built training spaces suggest that the concept of wiki anxiety measured in this research more accurately reflects anxiety experienced during interaction than computer anxiety. Additionally the in-built training spaces using tutorials were seen to lead to better first experiences for novice users in using the wiki markup interface than those without (such as when experiencing sandbox training spaces and no training). Similarly the presence of a tutorial reduced wiki anxiety during interaction but did not affect anxiety towards future editing. From these findings the work advanced to study the effect of identity salience on wiki anxiety during editing and wiki usability focusing on contributing content using a user group with experience editing wikis. This was so as to explore the effect of wiki characteristics on user experience variables above that from first exposure anxiety likely in novice users. The research found that participants were less anxious when editing the wiki anonymously than when editing using a pseudonym and full name identity. There was however no effect of identity salience on usability rating. Additionally the type of edit conducted by participants, in terms of addition or deletion and replacement of content, did not have a significant effect on either anxiety during editing or usability evaluation. Further research exploring the effect of flexibility and other user behaviour on user anxiety and usability evaluation when contributing subsequently found that there was no significant effect of flexibility on the wiki user experience variables. The work demonstrates successful empirical evaluation of the wiki user editing experience can be achieved and can lead to important causal insight into the effects of wiki site design on the users‟ experience. It also identifies aspects of the site that can lead to the reduction of anxiety towards editing during interaction and influence usability rating towards the system.

This thesis is concerned with the user experience of crowds, incorporating issues of comfort, satisfaction, safety and performance within a given crowd situation. Factors that influence the organisation and monitoring of crowd events will be considered. A comprehensive review of the literature revealed that crowd safety, pedestrian flow modeling, public order policing and hooliganism prevention, has received the greatest attention with previous research on crowds. Whereas crowd performance, comfort and satisfaction has received less attention, particularly within spectator events (sporting and music for example). Original research undertaken for this doctoral thesis involved a series of studies: user focus groups, stakeholder interviews, and observational research within event security and organisation. Following on from these investigations, the findings have been integrated with a tool to assist crowd organisers and deliverers during the planning of crowd events, and accompanying user feedback interviews following use of the tool. The overarching aim of the research within this thesis was to explore the complex issues that contribute to the user experience of being in a crowd, and how this might be improved. The crowd user focus groups revealed differences in factors affecting crowd satisfaction, varying according to age and user expectations. Greater differences existed between crowd users, than across crowd situations, highlighting the importance of identifying expected crowd members when planning individual events. Additionally, venue design, organisation, safety and security concerns were found to highly affect crowd satisfaction, irrespective of group differences or crowd situations, showing the importance of these issues when considering crowd satisfaction for all crowd events, for any crowd members. Stakeholder interviews examining crowds from another perspective suggested that overall safety was a high priority due to legal obligations, in order to protect venue reputation. Whereas, comfort and satisfaction received less attention within the organisation of crowd events due to budget considerations, and a lack of concern as to the importance of such issues. Moreover, communication and management systems were sometimes inadequate to ensure compliance with internal procedures. In addition a lack of usable guidance was seen to be available to those responsible for organising crowd situations. Eleven themes were summarised from the data, placed in order of frequency of references to the issues: health and safety, public order, communication, physical environment, public relations, crowd movement, event capacity, facilities, satisfaction, comfort, and crowd characteristics. Results were in line with the weighting of the issues within the literature, with health and safety receiving the most attention, and comfort and satisfaction less attention. These results were used to form the basis of observational checklists for event observations across various crowd situations. Event observations took two forms: observing the role of public and private security, and observing crowd events from the user perspective. Observations within public and private security identified seven general themes: communication, anticipating crowd reaction, information, storage, training, role confusion, financial considerations and professionalism. Findings questioned the clarity of the differing roles of public and private security, and understanding of these differences. Also the increasing use of private over public security within crowd event security, and the differing levels of training and experience within public and private security were identified. Event observations identified fifteen common themes drawn from the data analysis: communication, public order, comfort, facilities, queuing systems, transportation, crowd movement, design, satisfaction, health and safety, public relations, event capacity, time constraints, encumbrances, and cultural differences. Key issues included the layout of the event venue together with the movement and monitoring of crowd users, as well as the availability of facilities in order to reduce competition between crowd users, together with possible links to maintaining public order and reducing anti-social behaviour during crowd events. Findings from the focus groups, interviews, and observations were then combined (to enhance the robustness of the findings), and developed into the Crowd Satisfaction Assessment Tool (CSAT) prototype, a practical tool for event organisers to use during the planning of crowd events. In order to assess proof of concept of the CSAT, potential users (event organisers) were recruited to use the CSAT during the planning of an event they were involved in organising. Semi-structured feedback interviews were then undertaken, to gain insight into the content, usefulness, and usability of the CSAT. Separately human factors researchers were recruited to review the CSAT, providing feedback on the layout and usability of the tool. Feedback interviews suggested the CSAT was a useful concept, aiding communication, and providing organisers with a systematic and methodical structure for planning ahead, prioritising ideas, and highlighting areas of concern. The CSAT was described as being clear and easy to follow, with clear aims, and clear instructions for completion, and was felt to aid communication between the various stakeholders involved in the organisation and management of an event, allowing information to be recorded, stored and shared between stakeholders, with the aim of preventing the loss of crucial information. The thesis concludes with a summary model of the factors that influence crowd satisfaction within crowd events of various descriptions. Key elements of this are the anticipation, facilities, and planning considered before an event, influences and monitoring during an event and reflection after an event. The relevance and impact of this research is to assist the planning of crowd events, with the overall aim of improving participant satisfaction during crowd events. From a business perspective the issue is important with competition between events, the desire to encourage return to events, and to increase profit for organisers. From an ergonomics perspective, there is the imperative of improving the performance of crowd organisers and the experience of crowd users.

This research focused on the development of a user centric framework for the interpretation of contextualised TV and video viewing experiences (UX). Methods to address content overload and provide better contextualisation when consuming video have been an area of academic discussion for almost 20 years (Burke, Felfernig, & Goker, 2011). However over the same period technical system design for video has actually moved away from attempts to model the nature of real viewing contexts. With now near ubiquitous access to video from a range of disparate devices the addition of contextualisation within video applications and devices represents an opportunity in terms of improving viewer UX. Three user studies were carried out to inform development of the framework and employed mixed method approaches. The first focused on understanding where video is watched and the contextual factors that defined those places as viewing situations. This study derived eight Archetype viewing situations and associated contextual cues. The second study measured viewing UX in context. Significant differences in subjective ratings for measured UX were found when viewing was compared within subjects across Viewing Archetype situations. A third study characterised viewing UX, identifying behavioural, environmental and technological factors which through observed frequency and duration were identified as indicative enablers and detractors in the creation of viewing UX. Concepts generated within the studies that related to viewing context identification and viewing UX classification through experiential factors were integrated into the framework. The framework provides a way through which to identify, describe and improve viewing UX across contexts. Additionally the framework was referenced to develop an exemplar system model for contextual adaptation in order to show its relevance to the generation of technical system design. Finally information for designers was created in the form of scenarios and suggestions for use in order to bring the framework to life as a resource for development teams.

What will happen to sport cars once our society and infrastructure allow for a fully autonomous transport systems? My concern for the ”survival of the sports car” clearly originates from an emotional viewpoint rather than a reasonable argument. We know about the benefits that come along with autonomy but that doesn’t make the fear of loosing the emotional side of driving unfounded. My aim was to create a scenario that allows both reason and emotion to coexist and furthermore to benefit from each other rather than to create a conflict. The result is a PORSCHE for 2040 that shows an exciting concept for steering fully autonomous cars of the future. It combines the benefits of autonomy with the emotions of sports cars.

Les technologies haptiques, stimulant le sens du toucher, sont utilisées depuis des années dans des applications de réalité virtuelle et de téléopération pour accroître l'immersion de l'utilisateur. Elles sont en revanche très peu employées dans les systèmes audiovisuels comme les cinémas. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'exploiter le potentiel des retours haptiques pour les contenus audiovisuels. Dans la première partie de la thèse, nous nous intéressons au rendu d'effets haptiques lors du visionnage d'une vidéo. Nous présentons tout d'abord un appareil générant des sensations de mouvements à 6 degrés de liberté. Au lieu de mettre tout le corps de l'utilisateur en mouvement, comme cela est fait avec les simulateurs de mouvements traditionnels, seulement la tête et les mains sont stimulées. Ce dispositif permet ainsi d'enrichir l'expérience audiovisuelle. Nous nous intéressons ensuite aux algorithmes de rendu d'effets haptiques dans un contexte audiovisuel. La combinaison de retours haptiques et de séquences vidéo amène de nouveaux problèmes lors du rendu haptique. Nous proposons un nouvel algorithme adapté à ce contexte. Dans la seconde partie de la thèse, nous nous concentrons sur la production d'effets haptiques. Premièrement nous présentons un nouvel outil d'édition graphique. Celui-ci propose trois méthodes d'interaction pour créer des effets de mouvement et pour les synchroniser avec une vidéo. De plus, cet outil permet de ressentir les effets créés. Ensuite nous nous penchons sur les combinaisons haptiques et audiovisuelles. Dans une nouvelle approche nommée Cinématographie Haptique, nous explorons le potentiel des effets haptiques pour créer de nouveaux effets dédiés aux réalisateurs de films. / Haptic technology, stimulating the sense of touch, is used for years in virtual reality and teleoperation applications for enhancing the user immersion. Yet it is still underused in audiovisual systems such as movie theaters. The objective of this thesis is thus to exploit the potential of haptics for audiovisual content. In the first part of this Ph.D. thesis, we address the haptic rendering in video viewing context. We first present a new device providing 6 degrees of freedom motion effects. Instead of moving the whole user's body, as it is traditionally done with motion platform, only the head and hands are stimulated. This device allows thus to enrich the audiovisual experience. Then we focus on the haptic rendering of haptic-audiovisuals. The combination of haptic effects and video sequences yields new challenges for the haptic rendering. We introduce a new haptic rendering algorithm to tackle these issues. The second part of this Ph.D. is dedicated to the production of haptic effects. We first present of novel authoring tool. Three editing methods are proposed to create motion effects and to synchronize them to a video. Besides, the tool allows to preview motion effects thanks to a force-feedback device. Then we study combinations of haptic feedback and audiovisual content. In a new approach, the Haptic Cinematography, we explore the potential of haptic effects to create new effects dedicated to movie makers.

Coherence describes the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of a virtual environment (VE) in presenting a credible scenario. A VR system with a high level of coherence could lead to strong plausibility illusion, which is a key component of the sense of presence. There are few existing studies centered around coherence, and they tend to put the user in a passive role when experiencing the VE without emphasizing on their active participation in the interaction. This dissertation makes up this gap by connecting the concept of coherence with fundamental 3D user interface design that focuses on the algorithms that map the user's actions to the VE's behaviors. Specifically, we inspect the design of coherent interactions for two complicated tasks, namely travel and object manipulation. For travel, we propose a family of redirected walking techniques called "narrative driven cell-based redirection", which lets the user traverse a VE that's much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. For object manipulation, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether an interface conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and usability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction. / Doctor of Philosophy / To create a virtual reality (VR) experience that feels plausible, it’s important to consider the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of the virtual environment (VE), which we call “coherence” of a VR system. We discuss how to support coherence in two types of fundamental VR interaction. The first one is travel, which concerns moving the viewpoint around following the user’s intention. For this task, we propose a family of novel interaction techniques called “narrative driven cell-based redirection”, which lets the user traverse a VE that’s much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. The second one is object manipulation, which is about controlling a virtual object using hand input. For this task, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether the interaction conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and controllability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction.

Orientador: Vânia Cristina Pires Nogueira Valente / Banca: Marcos Américo / Banca: Daniela Melaré Vieira Barros / Resumo: Os e-readers, aparelhos voltados para leitura de livros digitais, a cada dia oferecem mais funcionalidades, a fim de proporcionar uma experiência de leitura similar ao dos livros impressos. Nesse contexto, a proposta desta pesquisa é discutir e questionar o uso de tecnologias voltadas para a leitura de e-books, em um cenário em que as mídias digitais estão cada vez mais intrínsecas na sociedade. Foi realizada uma pesquisa exploratória e qualitativa, a fim de analisar a interface, usabilidade e funcionalidades dos principais e-readers vendidos no Brasil, comparando-os com livros impressos. Para o referencial teórico, foram utilizadas as teorias da Experiência do Usuário e do Design Emocional, propostas por Norman (2008), para que fosse possível relacionar as principais diferenças entre os e-readers e livros impressos. A metodologia utilizada para a obtenção de dados foi a aplicação de um questionário online com um grupo de usuários de e-readers. A partir das respostas do questionário, foi realizada uma interpretação dos dados obtidos com as teorias expostas no referencial teórico e, por fim, uma discussão a respeito dos hábitos de leitura de livros impressos e digitais / Abstract: The e-readers, devices aimed at reading digital books, each day offer more features to provide a reading experience similar to printed books. In this context, the proposal of this research is to discuss and question the use of technologies aimed at reading e-books, in a scenario where digital media are increasingly intrinsic in society. An exploratory and qualitative research was carried out in order to analyze the interface, usability and functionalities of the main e-readers sold in Brazil, comparing them with printed books. For the theoretical reference, the theories of User Experience and Emotional Design, proposed by Norman (2008), were used, so that it was possible to relate the main differences between e-readers and printed books. The methodology used to obtain data was the application of an online survey with a group of ereader users. From the answers of the survey, an interpretation of the data obtained with the theories exposed in the theoretical framework was carried out and, finally, a discussion about the habits of reading of printed and digital books / Mestre