Emotional Interaction Design : Effects of Negative Affective Interactions on User Experience Design
Oskar Kenttälä · Osuva (University of Vaasa) · 2019
User interfaces and user experience is a modern phenomenon that has gained visibility with the rise of the globally connected internet era, especially with the many failings connected to poor usability. It is not uncommon to encounter applications, systems and products that are designed from a point of view which does not relate well to the user’s requirements, causing negative emotions including frustration and aggravation. In this thesis the connection between insufficient user experience design and negative end user emotions is studied, along with how this eventually reflects upon a system in general. The hypothesis is that negative aspects cause negative emotions, but the eventual effect on the system is subjective. The theoretical framework is based upon previous theories and research done in User Experience Design, with a focus on Interaction Design related subjects such as Usability and Affective Design. The research was conducted via a two-part interview, with the first part being Participatory Heuristic Evaluation based tasks, based on Usability research, and the second part being an interview, created with an Affective Design based focus in the questions. The goal of this research was to first discover if the test material had aspects that could cause negative emotions in the user, while the interview was designed to discover if the evaluators were affected negatively by the system and how this reflected upon the system. The test was conducted by five evaluators, non-professional in usability, considered expert users for the system. The test material was Wilma, a School Information System developed by Visma. The research indicates that the test material had indeed several different aspects that were known, based upon contemporary research, to cause negative emotions in users and all of the evaluators were similarly considered to be negatively affected by the lack of proper User Experience Design. The effects on the system were as hypothesized, subjective, with aggravation and heaviness being the eventual outcomes. The research suggests that the user’s emotions can be affected by UX design and the affective design approach works well as an evaluation method to discover general aspects of a system, albeit the subjective nature of emotions can cause inaccuracy.