Review of the use of neurophysiological and biometric measures in experimental design research

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Design is inherently affected by human-related factors and it is of no surprise that the fine-tuning of instruments capable of measuring aspects of human behavior has attracted interest in the design field. The recalled instruments include a variety of devices that capture and quantitatively assess people's unintentional and unconscious reactions and that are generally referred as neurophysiological or biometric. The number of experimental applications of these instruments in design was extremely limited as of 2016, when Lohmeyer and Meboldt published a first report on relevant measures and their interpretation in design. In the last few years, the number of relevant publications has increased dramatically and this determines the opportunity to carry out a comprehensive review in the field. The reviewed contributions are analyzed and classified according to, among others, instruments used, the kind of stakeholders involved and the supported design research activities. The role of biometric measures with respect to traditional research methods is emphasized too. The discussed instruments can represent supports or substitutes for traditional approaches, as well as they are capable of exploring phenomena that could not be addressed hitherto. The intensity of research concerning experiments with biometric measurements is discussed too; a particular focus of the final discussion is the individuation of obstacles that prevent them from becoming commonplace in design research.</jats:p>

A framework for studying design thinking through measuring designers’ minds, bodies and brains

“…Other publications synthesize the large body of methods and results on advances in studying design through physiology and neurocognition. See Balters & Steinert (2017) on monitoring emotion through neurophysiological tools; Seitamaa-Hakkarainen et al 2016and Borgianni & Maccioni (2020) on neuroscience and design; and Pidgeon et al (2016) on neuroimaging and design creativity. Our aim encapsulates a descriptive framework to better understand the connection between the study of the minds, bodies and brains of designers while designing and to highlight new research challenges that will shape future work in design research.…”

Observing Pictures and Videos of Creative Products: An Eye Tracking Study

“…However, while the detected differences regard the visual behavior, other aspects can be of interest and worth investigating. To this respect, the evaluation of additional criteria might benefit from different techniques, including participants' questionnaires, interviews, reports, and surveys, which are not seldom combined with ET data [83]. Still, biometric and behavioral measures other than ET are nowadays available to investigate emotions.…”

“…It can also be remarked that the study of interactions with stimuli can nowadays benefit from systems and technologies that allow scholars to analyze people's behavior insightfully. Such systems refer particularly to tools for biometric measures [83], such as Eye-Tracking (ET), and behavioral studies [84], such as facial expression recognition. All these systems, which have made inroads in design and human-computer interaction, are capable of capturing facets of people's interactions in terms of spontaneous and uncontrolled actions, reactions and physiological changes.…”

“…An exhaustive description of the experimental applications of ET in design is provided by [83]. When product evaluations are considered, pictures still represent the predominant form of representation in design-related experiments, while the opportunity to employ videos is substantially neglected.…”

“…The TVD was here chosen as a measure of attention and interest aroused by AOIs, but other ET variables are common in design studies to represent gaze and observation phenomena, see [83].…”