Sad is heavy and happy is light
Jörn Hurtienne, Christian Stößel, Katharina Weber · 2009
Population stereotypes describe ways in which people, often unconsciously, expect user interface elements to function. Thus they can provide powerful rules for designing intuitive interaction. The literature, however, documents only a few population stereotypes and most of them do not tap the full potential of tangible interaction. Here, we try to alleviate this situation by providing a theory and a method to obtain candidate population stereotypes with a special emphasis on physical-to-abstract mappings. Twenty-nine stereotype candidates were derived from the theory and their validity was empirically tested. The results indicate that more than half of them can be recommended as design guidelines right away; the remainder needs further investigation regarding the contexts under which they can be applied.