Experimental Study on the Effect of Users' Prior Experience and Product Features on the Usability of a Product

DS 86: Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Design Creativity,Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

Year: 2016
Editor: Julie Linsey, Maria Yang, and Yukari Nagai
Author: Yusuke, Shirai; Kaori, Yamada; Toshiharu, Taura
Series: ICDC
ISBN: 978-1-904670-82-7

Abstract

This study focused on ‘signs’ on products, which include the shape and visual features of products which may give some affordance to users. We experimentally investigated the effects that these signs and users’ prior experience have on users’ behaviour when using products. An experiment was conducted to observe how these signs are regarded by users and how they affect users’ behaviours. In the experiment, the subjects wore wearable cameras and the recorded video data were analysed in regard to the effect of the ‘sign’, ease of finding the ‘sign’, and prior experience of using similar products. From the results, a significant difference was found in user behaviours in relation to whether the subjects had prior experience of such products. However, the effect of the ‘signs’ themselves was not confirmed.

Keywords: user behaviour, feature of product, user’s viewpoint