I will be taking a break from uselog for the coming month. See you on September 14th.

Today I presented, on behalf of my fellow authors and myself, an exploratory study on expected and experienced usability in electronic consumer products at the IEA2009 congress on ergonomics. You can download the full paper (pdf), or read a summary below. The study shows that expected and experienced usability can differ significantly under the influence of usage, how expected usability can be influenced, and what the effect of poor experienced usability can be.

Aim
In the paper we explore why consumers do not seem to have a very pre-purchase distinct preference for usable products, even though these would probably satisfy them more after purchase. We wanted to explore the hypothesis that this might be due to the fact that it might be to hard for consumers to judge before use whether a product is usable or not. We call the pre-use assumptions that people have about the usability of a product expected usability. Experienced usability is the opinion people have about usability after use. We wanted to explore what product properties influence expected usability, and whether and when there is a difference between expected and experienced usability. And what the consequences of that are.


Method
To study this, we showed people a number of consumer electronics products (1 navigation system, 3 alarm clocks), asked for their opinions through a questionnaire and an in-depth interview, gave them the product to use at home for two weeks, and then reassessed their opinions. So contrary to most studies on this issue people got to use the product for an extended amount of time and in their own environment.

What you see may not be what you get
The results showed that people's assessment of product usability can differ significantly before and after use. Expected usability was influenced by brand, price, styling and functional form. In addition, indications were found that expected usability can be influenced by marketing efforts, previous experiences with similar products, and opinions of other people. It was shown that product appearance (aesthetics and functional form) can be a misleading predictor for experienced usability. In other words: what you see may not be what you get.

Price as an indicator for experienced usability
For one of the alarm clocks a significant gap was found between expected and experienced usability. After having used this product the participants indicated they were considerably less willing to pay the indicated retail price. As one of the participants put it: "I would not use this alarm clock even if I would get it for free!" They seemed to use the price they were willing to pay as an expression for the poor experienced usability. These participants also rated usability as a more important product property before then after use. To paraphrase Tractinsky (2000): "When something is unusable, beauty no longer matters."

Functional form, styling and expected usability
The appearance of the product seemed to impact expected usability in two ways. The functional form aspects, such as number of buttons and screen size seemed to impact the participants' anticipations about the user interface of a product, while the styling of a product seemed to project a more general image of being easy to use or being aimed at a target group for which products need to be easy to use (children). So designers could use a products appearance to heighten expected usability. However, then the experienced usability needs to be in line with expectations, because disconfirmation of expectations is one of the triggers for customer dissatisfaction.

Reference
Kuijk, J.I. van, E.E. Preijde, E.N. Toet, H. Kanis (2009) "Expected versus experienced usability: what you see is not always what you get." IEA2009: 17th World Congress on Ergonomics, August 9-14, Beijing, China.

I'm currently attending the congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA2009) in Beijing, where I will be presenting a paper on 'expected versus experienced usability' (stay tuned, I'll post it thursday, after the presentation). Being here I thought was a good reason to list some of the upcoming usability and ergonomics conferences for 2009 and 2010. Enjoy!

MobileHCI09
September 15-18, 2009 - Bonn (Germany)
The 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services.

DPPI'09
October 13-16, 2009 - Compiègne (France)
The 4th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces.


HFES 2009
October 19-23, 2009 - San Antonio (USA)
The 53rd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.


DfU Symposium
November 12, 2009 - Delft (The Netherlands)
On World Usability Day 2009, the Design for Usability research project is hosting a symposium on usability in product development practice. Save the date for a whole day of engaging lectures, workshops and meeting user-centered design professionals and academics.

CHI 2010
April 10-15 April 2010 - Atlanta (USA)
The 28th conference of the ACM special interest group for Computer Human Interaction (or SIGCHI, or CHI).


UPA 2010
May 24-28, 2010 - Munich (Germany)
The annual meeting of the Usability Professionals' Association.

When replacing their old ATMs with newer touchscreen models, US bank Wells Fargo hired design firm Pentagram to redesign the on-screen interface. Holger Struppek, who did the visual design on the project, has a highly illustrated story of the design process on his weblog physicalinterface.com.

In the story there's an excellent example of branding versus usability considerations when designing a user interface:

However, blue seemed to be a color that was genuinely pleasant to look at, and even though it was “off-brand”, everyone could live with it. It provided great contrast to the red Return Card button and the yellow alert boxes. During user testing, we presented participants with our color choices and got the same results: “It’s calming”, “I like the blue sky”, ... and so we went with it.

Surprisingly, Wells Fargo recently switched the UI to the current tan color scheme. I don’t know what prompted that decision, but it does bring it back in line with their brand.

[Via: Jane Pyle]

One of the 'founding fathers of HCI', John Carroll, has written an excellent historic overview of how the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) developed, diversified and matured. A must read, really puts some developments into perspective.

Today, largely due to the success of that endeavor, HCI is a vast and multifaceted community, loosely bound by the evolving concept of usability, and the integrating commitment to value human concerns as the primary consideration in creating interactive systems.