Subtle patterns in users' think-aloud (TA) verbalizations and speech features are shown to be telltale signs of User Experience (UX) problems. However, such patterns were uncovered among young adults. Whether such patterns apply for older adults remains unknown. We conducted TA usability testing with older adults using physical and digital products. We analyzed their verbalizations, extracted speech features, identified UX problems, and uncovered the patterns that indicate UX problems. Our results show that when older adults encounter problems, their verbalizations tend to include observations (remarks), negations, question words and words with negative sentiments; and their voices tend to include high loudness, high pitch and high speech rate. We compare these subtle patterns with those of young adults uncovered in recent studies and discuss the implications of these patterns for the design of Human-AI collaborative UX analysis tools to better pinpoint UX problems.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445680
Priming is used as a way of increasing the diversity of proposals in end-user elicitation studies, but priming has not been investigated thoroughly in this context. We conduct a distributed end-user elicitation study with 167 participants, which had three priming groups: a no-priming control group, sci-fi priming, and a creative mindset group. We evaluated the gestures proposed by these groups in a distributed learnability and memorability study with 18 participants. We found that the user-elicited gestures from the sci-fi group were significantly faster to learn, requiring an average of 1.22 viewings to learn compared to 1.60 viewings required to learn the control gestures, and 1.56 viewings to learn the gestures elicited from the creative mindset group. In addition, both primed gesture groups had higher memorability with 80% of the sci-fi-primed gestures and 73% of the creative mindset group gestures were recalled correctly after one week without practice compared to 43% of the control group gestures.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445758
There is a rapidly growing literature on dark patterns, user interface designs—typically related to shopping or privacy—that researchers deem problematic. Recent work has been predominantly descriptive, documenting and categorizing objectionable user interfaces. These contributions have been invaluable in highlighting specific designs for researchers and policymakers. But the current literature lacks a conceptual foundation: What makes a user interface a dark pattern? Why are certain designs problematic for users or society? We review recent work on dark patterns and demonstrate that the literature does not reflect a singular concern or consistent definition, but rather, a set of thematically related considerations. Drawing from scholarship in psychology, economics, ethics, philosophy, and law, we articulate a set of normative perspectives for analyzing dark patterns and their effects on individuals and society. We then show how future research on dark patterns can go beyond subjective criticism of user interface designs and apply empirical methods grounded in normative perspectives.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445610
Online display advertising on websites is widely disliked by users, with many turning to ad blockers to avoid ``bad'' ads. Recent evidence suggests that today’s ads contain potentially problematic content, in addition to well-studied concerns about the privacy and intrusiveness of ads. However, we lack knowledge of which types of ad content users consider problematic and detrimental to their browsing experience. Our work bridges this gap: first, we create a taxonomy of 15 positive and negative user reactions to online advertising from a survey of 60 participants. Second, we characterize classes of online ad content that users dislike or find problematic, using a dataset of 500 ads crawled from popular websites, labeled by 1000 participants using our taxonomy. Among our findings, we report that users consider a substantial amount of ads on the web today to be clickbait, untrustworthy, or distasteful, including ads for software downloads, listicles, and health & supplements.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445459
Prior work in cross-cultural psychology and neuroscience has shown robust variations in visual attention patterns. People from \hl{East Asian societies,} in which a holistic thinking style predominates, have been found to attend to contextual information in scenes more than Westerners, whose tendency to think analytically expresses itself in greater attention to foreground objects. This paper applies these findings to website design, using an online study to evaluate whether Japanese (N=65) remember more and are faster at finding contextual website information than US Americans (N=84). Our results do not support this hypothesis. Instead, Japanese took overall significantly longer to find information than US participants---a difference that was exacerbated by an increase in website complexity---suggesting that Japanese may be holistically taking in a website before engaging with detailed information. We discuss implications of these findings for website design and cross-cultural research.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445519
Spatial computing devices that blend virtual and real worlds have the potential to soon become ubiquitous. Yet, creating experiences for spatial computing is non-trivial and needs skills in programming and 3D content creation, rendering them inaccessible to a wider group of users. We present SpatialProto, an in-situ spatial prototyping system for lowering the barrier to engage in spatial prototyping. With a depth-sensing capable Mixed Reality headset, SpatialProto lets users record animated objects of the real-world environment (e.g. paper, clay, people or any other prop), extract only the relevant parts, and directly place and transform these recordings in their physical environment. We describe the design and implementation of SpatialProto, a user study evaluating the system's prototype with non-expert users (n=9), and demonstrate applications where multiple captures are fused for compelling Augmented Reality experiences.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445560
Interactive machine learning (iML) tools help to make ML accessible to users with limited ML expertise. However, gathering necessary training data and expertise for model-building remains challenging. Transfer learning, a process where learned representations from a model trained on potentially terabytes of data can be transferred to a new, related task, offers the possibility of providing "building blocks" for non-expert users to quickly and effectively apply ML in their work. However, transfer learning largely remains an expert tool due to its high complexity. In this paper, we design a prototype to understand non-expert user behavior in an interactive environment that supports transfer learning. Our findings reveal a series of data- and perception-driven decision-making strategies non-expert users employ, to (in)effectively transfer elements using their domain expertise. Finally, we synthesize design implications which might inform future interactive transfer learning environments.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445096
The advancement of computational design and fabrication technologies has allowed combining physical and digital processes in architecture. Existing methods for physical-digital integration offer limited support for explorations with folded non-linear surfaces. This paper introduces a feedback-oriented design approach linking physical models with digital tools to enhance ideation processes in architecture. We employ paper as a medium for translating simple mock-up ideas to more elaborate digital design models. We explain the physical exploration, 3D scanning, digital simulation, and fabrication processes. Then, we discuss the results, observations, and limitations of this design approach.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445639
Reflection is an often addressed design goal in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. An increasing number of artefacts for reflection have been developed in recent years. However, evaluating if and how an interactive technology helps a user reflect is still complex. This makes it difficult to compare artefacts (or prototypes) for reflection, impeding future design efforts. To address this issue, we developed the Technology-Supported Reflection Inventory (TSRI), which is a scale that evaluates how effectively a system supports reflection. We first created a list of possible scale items based on past work in defining reflection. The items were then reviewed by experts. Next, we performed exploratory factor analysis to reduce the scale to its final length of nine items. Subsequently, we confirmed test-retest validity of our instrument, as well as its construct validity. The TSRI enables researchers and practitioners to compare prototypes designed to support reflection.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445673
Visual and physical representations of historical personal data have been discussed as artifacts that can lead to self-reflection through meaning-making. However, it is yet unclear how those two concepts relate to each other. We focus on meaningfulness, a part of meaning-making that relates to feelings. In this paper, we present three projects where mundane objects, our data agents, are combined in meaningful ways with personal data with the aim to trigger reflection by placing a person's individual experience of data in relation to others'. To identify relationships between self-reflection and meaningfulness we use Fleck and Fitzpatrick's framework to describe the levels of reflection that we found in our projects and Mekler and Hornbæk's meaning framework to define the depth of reflection. We conclude with a discussion on four themes in which we outline how data agents informed the intersections between our central concepts. This paper constitutes a first step towards unpacking those relationships and invites for further explorations by the HCI community.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445112
In the attention economy, video apps employ design mechanisms like autoplay that exploit psychological vulnerabilities to maximize watch time. Consequently, many people feel a lack of agency over their app use, which is linked to negative life effects such as loss of sleep. Prior design research has innovated external mechanisms that police multiple apps, such as lockout timers. In this work, we shift the focus to how the internal mechanisms of an app can support user agency, taking the popular YouTube mobile app as a test case. From a survey of 120 U.S. users, we find that autoplay and recommendations primarily undermine sense of agency, while playlists and search support it. From 13 co-design sessions, we find that when users have a specific intention for how they want to use YouTube they prefer interfaces that support greater agency. We discuss implications for how designers can help users reclaim a sense of agency over their media use.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445467
This paper presents and evaluates Aiki, a simple browser extension designed to redirect a user to a learning platform for a fixed amount of time before accessing websites defined as 'procrastination' or 'time-wasting' websites. The goal of the extension is to enable the user to exchange time spent on pages they believe contribute less to their own productivity for microlearning activities, defined as small or short-term learning activities. The paper describes the design and development of Aiki and evaluates the extension with a group of n=10 participants studying the Danish language. Based on a two-week study, we conclude that this type of extension, even in its preliminary version, has the potential to improve language skills in a lightweight manner and that redirection is an important alternative to blocking for procrastination management.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445202
The rise of autonomous systems in cities, such as automated vehicles (AVs), requires new approaches for prototyping and evaluating how people interact with those systems through context-based user interfaces, such as external human-machine interfaces (eHMIs). In this paper, we present a comparative study of three prototype representations (real-world VR, computer-generated VR, real-world video) of an eHMI in a mixed-methods study with 42 participants. Quantitative results show that while the real-world VR representation results in higher sense of presence, no significant differences in user experience and trust towards the AV itself were found. However, interview data shows that participants focused on different experiential and perceptual aspects in each of the prototype representations. These differences are linked to spatial awareness and perceived realism of the AV behaviour and its context, affecting in turn how participants assess trust and the eHMI. The paper offers guidelines for prototyping and evaluating context-based interfaces through simulations.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445159