USABILITY AND USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCH GROUP

People – Luciano Gamberini, Anna Spagnolli, Valeria Orso

Description
What's our goal?
Our aim is make the usage and the interaction with technological devices satisfactory and pleasant. To do so we tackle the entire project life cycle:
- collecting stakeholders' views on the design;
- investigating the strengths and flaws of the device;
- evaluating the affective feelings that the interaction with the device raises in the user.

Tools
To get a deep understanding of the user's interactions, we adopt a wide methodological portfolio, entailing both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
We apply participatory design techniques to gather end users' and stakeholders' views and needs in the early phases of the project.
The usability of devices is investigated employing a variety of methods according to the level of fulfilment of the prototype. Our investigations rely mainly on performance indexes, computer-supported video-analysis, questionnaires built on purpose, structured and semi-structured interviews. Depending on the characteristics of the device, we can conduct usability evaluations either in the laboratory, with fully controlled conditions, or in the field.
The analysis of the affective states linked with the experience of use is tackled with different both objective and subjective investigation tools, relying respectively on software for the automatic recognition of emotions and users' reports through questionnaires and interviews.