Can Unhappy Pictures Enhance the Effect of Personas? A User Experiment

There has been little research into whether a persona's picture should portray a happy or unhappy individual. We report a user experiment with 235 participants, testing the effects of happy and unhappy image styles on user perceptions, engagement, and personality traits attributed to personas using a mixed-methods analysis. Results indicate that the participant's perceptions of the persona's realism and pain point severity increase with the use of unhappy pictures. In contrast, personas with happy pictures are perceived as more extroverted, agreeable, open, conscientious, and emotionally stable. The participants’ proposed design ideas for the personas scored more lexical empathy scores for happy personas. There were also significant perception changes along with the gender and ethnic lines regarding both empathy and perceptions of pain points. Implications are the facial expression in the persona profile can affect the perceptions of those employing the personas. Therefore, persona designers should align facial expressions with the task for which the personas will be employed. Generally, unhappy images emphasize realism and pain point severity, and happy images invoke positive perceptions.

An action design research to facilitate the adoption of personal health records

Adoption and user perceptions are dominant on personal health records literature and have led to a better understanding of what individuals' behaviors and perceptions are about the adoption of personal health records. However, these insights are descriptive and are not actionable to allow creating personal health records that will overcome the adoption problems identified by users. This study uses action design research to provide actionable knowledge regarding user perceptions and adoption and their application in the case of the digital allergy card. To achieve this, we conducted interviews with patients and physicians as part of the evaluation of the digital allergy card mock-up and the first prototype. As results, we provided some research proposals regarding the benefits of, levers for, and barriers to adoption of the digital allergy card that can be tested for several other personal health records.

Modelling Road User Perceptions towards Safety, Comfort, and Chaos at Shared Space: The via Maqueda Case Study, Italy

This study aims to investigate the impacts of perception of infrastructure, sociodemographic characteristics, frequency of road use, and road user perception on safety, comfort, and chaos with respect to shared spaces. The case study area was the Via Maqueda, a shared street in Palermo, Italy. A face-to-face survey was conducted and the answers of 200 of the participants, who use three active travel modes, namely, walking, cycling, and micromobility, were analysed. The results obtained from the ordered logit models suggest that one-unit higher perception of infrastructure will increase safety and comfort perceptions for both walking and cycling. Females feel less safe while walking and less comfortable while cycling at shared spaces compared to males. Increasing the age group by one unit will decrease the safety and comfort perceptions for walking. The participants who use the shared spaces more frequently perceive that they feel more comfortable with cycling. Participants, particularly males, find the shared spaces less chaotic for walking when the perception of infrastructure is higher. Regarding the micromobility use at shared spaces, females feel less comfortable compared to males while using micromobility.

A mobile application for assessing the product success on crowdfunding campaign: the development and usability testing

Crowdfunding is one of the alternative sources of finance for product-based startups. Products are funded if the campaign is considered to be successful in reaching the target. The assessment of the success rate of product campaigns develops into three successive levels, namely overfunding, successful and unsuccessful. Due to the complication of setting up a product campaign on an online crowdfunding platform, a mobile application to aid campaigners needs to be developed. Moreover, it is essential to evaluate its ease to use. This study aims to (1) develop an android-based application, (2) evaluate the usability of the application based on user perceptions. The application ('POSCA') was developed by emphasizing user experience (UX), while the Use Questionnaire evaluated its usability. Ten participants were invited to evaluate the system usability and interface. The results suggest that 'POSCA' has good scores of usability: ‘efficiency’ = 49.11% in the fifth trial, ‘very-easy-to-learn’ (95%), ‘useful’ (85%), ‘easy-to-use’ (87%), and ‘satisfy-the-users’ (88%).

Public Perception on Attributes of Walking Avenues in Urban Areas of Sri Lanka

Currently, the urban areas become more congested; numerous health concerns such as obesity are becoming more prevalent among urban dwellers followed by lack of exercise. With this situation, provision of adequate areas for exercising to the satisfaction of all is critical with limited space in urban areas. Hence, an ideal solution emerges as ‘walking ways’ where a strip of land is only needed. The interest of walking ways is also developed in Sri Lanka very recently. However, there is no evidence on a research to identify the attributes, should developed along with the walkway to increase the attraction of the users. The main aim of this study is to examine the public perception on attributes of walking avenues in urban areas of Sri Lanka. Data was acquired by a personal-administered questionnaire from a convenience sample of 150 walking trail users on three settings. The descriptive statistics, univariate analysis, hoc multiple comparisons and homogeneous subsets technique were used as methodological analysis. The findings disclose ‘safety’ as the preferred attribute while shading and natural settings significant. An income variation presents that user with above the income level of LKR 65,000 preferred cafeterias providing herbal drinks while the users with below that income level are less interest with the attributes of changing rooms and street vendors. This article fills the gap of identifying user perceptions particular to a novel design concept of walking trail in Sri Lanka with interesting attributes getting more benefits.

Understanding User Perceptions of Proactive Smart Speakers

Voice assistants, such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Home, increasingly find their way into consumer homes. Their functionality, however, is currently limited to being passive answer machines rather than proactively engaging users in conversations. Speakers' proactivity would open up a range of important application scenarios, including health services, such as checking in on patient states and triggering medication reminders. It remains unclear how passive speakers should implement proactivity. To better understand user perceptions, we ran a 3-week field study with 13 participants where we modified the off-the-shelf Google Home to become proactive. During the study, our speaker proactively triggered conversations that were essentially Experience Sampling probes allowing us to identify when to engage users. Applying machine-learning, we are able to predict user responsiveness with a 71.6% accuracy and find predictive features. We also identify self-reported factors, such as boredom and mood, that are significantly correlated with users' perceived availability. Our prototype and findings inform the design of proactive speakers that verbally engage users at opportune moments and contribute to the design of proactive application scenarios and voice-based experience sampling studies.

Analisis Evaluasi Kinerja Ride Sourcing Dengan Persepsi Pengguna

Transportasi sebagai komponen utama dalam mendukung kelangsungan kehidupan tidak bisa dilepaskan dari aktivitas keseharian manusia. Kedudukan transportasi sebagai penyokong kehidupan manusia mempunyai karakteristik yang berbeda-beda sehingga sangat bersifat spesifik, beberapa faktor yang mempengaruhi hal tersebut antara lain kondisi sosial demografis wilayah. Faktor-faktor tersebut memiliki pengaruh terhadap kinerja transportasi di wilayah tersebut. Tingkat kepadatan penduduk akan memiliki pengaruh signifikan terhadap kemampuan transportasi melayani kebutuhan masyarakat. Seiring dengan perkembangan transportasi, perkembangan teknologi dalam berbagai aspek kehidupan manusia juga semakin berkembang, dan salah satu pengaruh perkembangan teknologi informasi dalam dunia transportasi adalah munculnya platform yang mampu memenuhi kebutuhan sosial masyarakat terhadap transportasi umum, Hal ini tidak lepas dari ketersediaan internet yang luas memberi kita kemampuan untuk berdagang di mana saja dan telah membawa peluang besar di bidang transportasi dan perjalanan. Salah satu moda transportasi publik di Makassar yang saat ini mulai dikelola oleh pihak swasta yang dikenal dengan transportasi berbasis online (Ride Sourcing). Hal inilah yang menarik perhatian peneliti untuk melakukan penelitian terhadap penggunaan transportasi online tersebut dalam hal ini Grab Online dengan menganalisis kinerja transportasi online terhadap persepsi masyarakat dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Pengolahan data dilakukan dengan metode persentase dan secara statistik dengan regresi linier berganda. Berdasarkan hasil pengolahan data maka diperoleh masing-masing koefisien efektivitas sebesar 0.472 dan koefisien efisiensi sebesar 0.479 yang dianalisa dari beberapa indikator yang paling berpengaruh dalam aspek efektivitas adalah indikator nyaman sebesar 0,485 dan indikator tarif / biaya sebesar 0,562 pada aspek efisiensi. Dimana secara keseluruhan, aspek efektivitas dan efisiensi memberikan pengaruh cukup kuat sebesar 71,3% terhadap persepsi masyarakat dalam penggunaan transportasi online (Grab). The Online Transportation Performance Analysis Of User Perceptions With A Statistical Approach. Transportation as a major component in supporting life cannot be separated from human daily activities. The position of transportation as a supporter of human life has different characteristics so very specifically, several factors that influence this include in the region's social demographic conditions. These factors have an influence on transportation performance in the region. The level of population density will have significance for the ability of transportation to meet the needs of the community. Along with the development of transportation, technological developments in various aspects of human life are also increasingly developing, and one of the developments in information technology in the world of transportation is the improvement of a platform that is able to meet the needs of the public for public transportation. One of the modes of public transportation in Makassar which is currently starting to be managed by private parties is known as online-based transportation. Grab Online by analyzing the performance of online transportation on people's perceptions using descriptive qualitative methods. Data processing is done by the method of contribution and statistics with multiple linear regression. Based on the results of data processing, obtained each acquisition coefficient of 0.472 and efficiency coefficient of 0.479, which was analyzed from some of the most beneficial indicators in the aspect of competence in accordance with comfortable indicators of 0.485 and cost / cost indicators of 0.562 based on efficiency aspects. Where overall, the efficiency and efficiency aspects provide a quite strong amount of 71.3% to the public perception in the use of online transportation (GRAB)

Energy saving potential of occupancy sensors in intermittent-use space types.

<p>For decades, studies have been suggesting the idea of occupancy sensors in intermittent use spaces for energy savings. This work investigates the potential energy savings of occupancy sensors in hallways, stairwells, seminar rooms and lavatories of an education building. Lighting is one of the largest consumers of energy in the building industry and these space types are often fully illuminated for long periods of vacancy. Lighting is for the user, not the building. Discussions centre around light use habits, energy saving behaviours and sensor technology such as time delay and daylight sensors. The experiment uses wireless light sensors and PIR sensors to measure light energy use and occupant use of 20 intermittent use spaces. A user survey was planned to run alongside the experiment to investigate user perceptions of changes in lighting but was discontinued due to unresolved software issues. Results of the experiment encouraged the use of occupancy sensors in intermittent use spaces. Lavatories attained highest energy saving potential 54%, seminar rooms highest annual cost savings per fitting $15.47 and highest annual energy savings 482kWh and hallways calculated the quickest payback of 8.6 years. Hallways, stairwells, seminar rooms and lavatories all offer potential for energy savings, supporting the theoretical ideas and success of occupancy sensors in intermittent use spaces.</p>