Investigating users’ intuitive interaction with complex artefacts

Abstract

This paper examines the role of intuition in the way that people operate unfamiliar devices. Intuition is a type of cognitive processing that is often non-conscious and utilises stored experiential knowledge. Intuitive interaction involves the use of knowledge gained from other products and/or experiences. Two initial experimental studies revealed that prior exposure to products employing similar features helped participants to complete set tasks more quickly and intuitively, and that familiar features were intuitively used more often than unfamiliar ones. A third experiment confirmed that performance is affected by a person's level of familiarity with similar technologies, and also revealed that appearance (shape, size and labelling of features) seems to be the variable that most affects time spent on a task and intuitive uses during that time. Age also seems to have an effect. These results and their implications are discussed.

The Design with Intent Method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour

“…with an unfamiliar interface), represent a degree of designer intent beyond this. Any such products will, of course, always be used within a context involving users' own intentions: emergent behaviours, intuition (Blackler et al 2009), appropriation (Salovaara 2008) or prior experience (Chamorro-Koc et al 2008) mean that designers' intended use (or usability) is not always translated into user behaviour. The task-artefact cycle (Carroll et al 1991) suggests that new artefacts will coevolve with behaviours (Walker et al 2009), in turn offering new possibilities.…”

Co-designing a diversity of social media products with and for older people

“…Problems reported by older people include handling and reading small buttons and text, too many functions and features, and unnecessary menus that are hard to navigate and understand [9,12,14]. Research also shows that prior experience with old technology affects how older people interact with new technology and ICT devices [1,15]. Even for those who have the requisite access and skill sets, the style of use and openness of online information sharing may not be considered appropriate.…”

Ageing, Technology Anxiety and Intuitive Use of Complex Interfaces

“…Blackler's [2,9] research investigating the hypothesis that intuitive use of products is based on prior experience with similar products did attempt to use the presence of anxiety in the participants as an indication of non-intuitive use. However, it was noted in the study that the psychophysiological tools used to measure heart rate and electrodermal activity (to indicate when participants were anxious) did not provide useful data due to latency issues.…”

“…In the context of interaction design, Blackler [9] and Hurtienne [11], based on their literature reviews of the nature of intuition, suggest that -intuitive use of product interfaces involves non-conscious use of user's prior-knowledge related to the product in use. In other words, the user is familiar (based on their earlier encounter with similar products or other relevant experiences) with different features and functions of the product [11,12]. Intuitive use of an interface can be recognised by the following characteristics: It is fast and effortless, it is generally non-conscious and does not involve conscious reasoning [9].…”

“…This research hypothesised that designing technological products that are more intuitive for older people to use can solve this problem. An intuitive interface requires minimal learning as it mostly relies on technology prior experience/familiarity of the users for effective interaction [2,3]. However, gradual shift of consumer products from hardware-based to microprocessor controlled software-based technologies has brought a higher level of abstraction into interaction with products [3,4].…”