Designing interactive systems for the experience of time

Abstract

User experience (UX) has become a central theme in usercentered design. It draws attention to the experiential side of use and sets new requirements for software design. Waiting and interruptions can be a source of negative experiences with interactive systems. This review paper discusses the subjective experience of time as a part of UX. It also provides advice on how to influence UX through time-considerate design. We start from the psychological theory of time perception and expand this cognitivist model to a direction compatible with affective computing. The outcome describes the interplay between cognition and affect through a concept of subjectively experienced time. We introduce six design guidelines for time-considerate design of everyday applications. Our design implications concern dialogues, progress indicators, and cost-effective system optimization relevant for UX. We point out the need for empirical research to fill in the gaps in the literature, particularly regarding user adjustment and its implications. Author KeywordsHCI design and evaluation methods; interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms; psychology; user experience; user models.

Subjectively Experienced Time and User Satisfaction: An Experimental Study of Progress Indicator Design in Mobile Application

“…Thus, the detailed information may cause "Percent" to be perceived as somewhat slower. However, the fact that "Percent" is also the most appreciated in terms of user satisfaction suggests that it also shapes expectations [30], which contributes to user satisfaction, although in some cases it is perceived as bringing longer SXT. The results from this study suggest that the progress indicator affects the UX in terms of SXT and user satisfaction, yet does not provide a linear correlation.…”

“…In contrast, the prevailing cognitivist history of HCI research has typically reduced time to "system response time" (the time taken by the system to provide feedback for the previous user input) and "user response times" (the time that it takes for the user to provide new input after system feedback) [29]. This approach has been criticized by Liikkanen and Gómez [30] for being outdated and incompatible with recent UX debates. They argue that the psychological understanding of human time experience has not been truly utilized for HCI, nor articulated as design implications.…”

“…Consequently, our memories of interactions with computers can be biased by these negative experiences, often related to waiting [44]. Liikkanen and Gómez [30] introduce the concept of "subjectively experienced time" (hereafter SXT) to help design the way systems account for time. SXT is defined as the "assessment of system response timeliness" (p. 3), which refers to how the subjective response time makes the user feel.…”

“…Therefore, when designing for UX, SXT is of more relevance than the system response time and user response time. This is because SXT reflects the overall experience and extended waiting can provoke increasing levels of negative emotion, frustration and anger [30].…”

Evaluating the user experience of acoustic data transmission

“…Furthermore, a lack of information about the expected waiting time can lead to an increase in the perceived waiting time [2], which consequently affects a user's perception of the time taken for the whole interaction. However, a user's perception of the speed of an interaction (whether accurate or not) affects their enjoyment in performing the task [47]. Another factor to consider is user tolerance threshold, as introduced by [69], arising from a user's expectation.…”