Population Stereotypes for Objects and Representations: Response Tendencies for Interacting With Everyday Objects and Interfaces

Abstract

Objective: The objective of the study is to replicate and extend population stereotypes from a broad range of users for display-control relations of common interfaces using pictures/images of the objects. Background: Population stereotypes for display-control configurations refer to people’s tendencies to associate certain control actions with display properties. An interface will benefit by being designed in a manner that is consistent with the stereotypes. The stimuli used in the present study include conceptual replications of objects that have been examined previously and new ones. Method: An online survey was designed to collect data about participants’ natural response tendencies or interpretations of the meaning associated with objects, representations, and colors. Participants were obtained through MTurk from the United States, India, and UK. Results: We replicated 76% and partially replicated an additional 16% of the stereotypic responses found in prior studies. Considering the full data set, we found stereotypic responses for 62% of the stimuli that are consistent across the three countries in which the participants were located, although the strength of these stereotypes may differ by location. For the remaining 38% of the stimuli, population stereotypes still emerged for some locations. Few gender differences were found. Conclusion: Cross-cultural stereotypic responses exist for many objects, representations, and display-control configurations. However, because stereotypes can be limited to specific regions or change over time, we recommend that they be captured periodically to ensure design guidelines based on the stereotypes remain valid. Application: Designers can use the stereotypic responses to guide design decisions.

Human factors research and user-centered design.

“…These stereotypes include, among others, (a) clockwise to up, (b) clockwise to increase, and (c) Warrick' s principle (the pointer will move in the same direction as the side of the knob closest to the display). When the display and control is arranged in a manner that results in consistent predictions by all of the stereotypes, individuals tend to make the same, expected response regardless of their demographic and country of origin (Vu & Sun, 2019). In contrast, if the display-control arrangement only complies with predictions made by a subset of stereotypes, then the responses are dependent on the unique experiences of the users.…”

“…Another factor that takes advantage of environmental cues to influence people' s actions is population stereotypes. For example, when approaching a door, people will tend to rotate a knob, push a handlebar, and pull a handle (Vu & Sun, 2019). These natural response tendencies are a result of spatial relationships made salient by the product.…”

A Study on the Intuitive Design of Target Search Tasks under Time and Information Pressure

“…According to human intuition, the brighter the object is, the higher the energy it emits; for example, the tail flame of an aircraft flying at high speed tends to be brighter, so the brighter an icon representing an aircraft, the higher the speed in the imagery icon experiment. Stereotype targets were designed according to the method described in [ 23 ]; a questionnaire survey was distributed to the subjects from our university to screen the stereotype targets to fit the subject group. According to the results of the screening, the stereotypes of the selected subject group were as follows: a flat aircraft wing represents low speed, a slightly angled wing represents medium speed, and an integrated wing represents high speed; a missile without a wing represents the highest speed (e.g., intercontinental missiles usually travel at speeds above Mach 10), a small wing represents medium speed (e.g., air-to-air missiles usually travel at speeds of no more than Mach 5), and a large, flat wing represents low speed (e.g., cruise missiles usually travel at speeds not exceeding the speed of sound).…”

On the nature of action–sentence compatibility effects.

“…There is also evidence that rotation can further depend on a mapping between clockwise for an increasing and counterclockwise for a decreasing quantity (Brebner & Sandow, 1976;Vu & Sun, 2019). Associations such as these are well-known in the design of humanmachine interfaces, and they reflect typical relationships between 1 A reviewer pointed out that Papesh (2015) used a Bayesian prior associated with large effect sizes, whereas action-compatibility effects may be small in size, and a misspecification of this sort would create a bias against finding evidence for an effect.…”

“…There is also evidence that rotation can further depend on a mapping between clockwise for an increasing and counterclockwise for a decreasing quantity (Brebner & Sandow, 1976; Vu & Sun, 2019). Associations such as these are well-known in the design of human–machine interfaces, and they reflect typical relationships between control actions and their outcomes (e.g., Bergum & Bergum, 1981; Proctor & Vu, 2006).…”