Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
5
User Experience Evaluation
We present some of the methods that were used for evaluation in the projects men-
tioned earlier and that were found to be handy for designers, instead of extensively
reviewing the literature about and reflecting on how user experience shall be eva-
luated in public spaces.
5.1
Qualitative Methods
Interviews with Experiential Prototypes.
Interactive installations for public spaces
have to be experienced in the actual space for the users to understand the design and
to give valuable input or feedback. This is done for most of the projects mentioned.
Co-Reflection.
In the project Strijp-T-ogether, co-reflection was used as a qualitative
and constructive approach on evaluating whether the installation triggers social inte-
raction [10]. “Co-reflection sessions can be developed in three parts: exploration on
the current situation, ideation through a discovery process and confrontation between
users and designers” [22].
Observations in Context.
It is important to observe in the context when design for
public spaces in order to understand the situations and to get a good grasp of the prob-
lems to be solved or the opportunities to be identified. Observing in context has dem-
onstrated its effectives not only to get the input for the ideas and concepts, but also in
evaluating whether the design has achieved its goal - but in the latter case, a proto-
type would be necessary.
5.2
Quantitative Measures
Connectedness.
Social Connectedness Scale Revised (SCS_R) questionnaire [23]
was chosen to evaluate the level of social connectedness of participants in the projects
“leave your mark”, Blobulous and Strijp-T-ogether. SCS-R is based on an earlier
version of Social Connectedness Scale [24]. SCS-R consists of 20 items (10 positive
and 10 negative). The negatively worded items are reverse scored and summed with
the positively worded items to create a scale score. A higher score on the SCS-R indi-
cates a stronger feeling of social connectedness.
Social Inclusion.
The Inclusion of community in self scale [25] is a simple yet effec-
tive pictorial measure consisting of six pairs of circles. Each pair of same-sized circles
overlaps slightly more than the preceding pair. Each circle on the left of the pair
represents the participant, while the circle on the right represents the community.
Connectedness to the community at large is assessed by the participant marking the
pair of circles that best describe her relationship with the community. It is found to
be useful in projects “Leaving your mark” and “Strijp-T-ogether”.
Attractiveness.
AttrakDiff [26] is an instrument for measuring the attractiveness of
interactive products. With the help of pairs of opposite adjectives, users can indicate
their perception of the product. These adjective-pairs make a collation of the
