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Extremely high correlations between repeated judgments of visual appeal of homepages shown for 50 milliseconds have been interpreted as evidence for a mere exposure effect [Lindgaard et al. 2006]. Continuing that work, the present research had two objectives. First, it investigated the relationship between judgments differing in cognitive demands. Second, it began to identify specific visual attributes that appear to contribute to different judgments. Three experiments are reported. All used the stimuli and viewing time as before. Using a paradigm known to disrupt processing beyond the stimulus offset, Experiment 1 was designed to ensure that the previous findings could not be attributed to such continued processing. Adopting a within-subject design, Experiment 2 investigated the extent to which judgments differing in cognitive demands (visual appeal, perceived usability, trustworthiness) may be driven by the visual characteristics of a Web page. It also enabled analyses of visual attributes that contributed most to the different judgments. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 but using a between-subject design to ensure that no practice effect could occur. The results suggest that all three types of judgments are largely driven by visual appeal, but that cognitively demanding judgments are processed in a qualitatively different manner than visual appeal, and that they rely on somewhat different visual attributes. A model accounting for the results is provided.

This paper describes passenger comfort as an experience generated by the cabin interior features. The findings of previous studies are affirmed regarding a set of 22 context features. Passengers experience a certain level of comfort when these features impact their body and elicit subjective perceptions. New findings characterise these perceptions in the form of eight themes and outline their particular eliciting features. Comfort is depicted as a complex construct derived by passengers' perceptions beyond the psychological (i.e. peace of mind) and physical (i.e. physical well-being) aspects, and includes perceptual (e.g. proxemics) and semantic (e.g. association) aspects. The seat was shown to have a focal role in eliciting seven of those themes and impacting comfort through its diverse characteristics. In a subsequent study, a group of aircraft cabin interior designers highlighted the possibility of employing the eight themes and their eliciting features as a framework for design and evaluation of new aircraft interiors.

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This article reports a case study of the iterative design and evaluation of a natural language-driven assistive technology, iGraph-LITE, providing people who are blind access to line graphs. Two laboratory-based usability studies involving blind and sighted people are presented with a discussion of the ensuing implementation of changes. Blind participants were found to adopt different graph interrogation strategies than sighted participants. A small field study is then reported in which a blind user who works with graphs took part to determine the degree to which the iGraph-LITE commands would meet the needs of blind graph experts. The final study invited sighted graph experts and novices to visually inspect and explain a set of line graphs comparable to those used in the usability studies. It aimed to highlight the concepts and the range of words sighted people use, to ascertain the appropriateness of the iGraph-LITE lexicon. A set of preliminary guidelines is presented.