Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between a product’s degree of usability and its degree of beauty. Both directions of causality have been demonstrated leading to “what is beautiful is usable” and “what is usable is beautiful hypothesis. Additionally, aesthetic research has demonstrated several principles that elicit a consistent pattern of responses. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between aesthetics and usability by means of a functional prime. Forty participants rated sixteen stimuli manipulated on four aesthetic principles; prototypicality, symmetry, composition, and shape. Mixed results indicate that certain aesthetic principles interact with one another in a functional usage.

Practice testing is an effective learning strategy, but it can lead to increased test anxiety and often has low voluntary participation rate. This paper describes a case study on the effects of a re-designed practice test using game-like elements. The results indicate that the gamified practice test had a high student participation rate and showed improved test performance.

Résumés sometimes contain graphical elements, and the use of such “graphical résumés” may be increasing. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of including different types of graphical elements in a résumé on the most important outcome measure from the perspective of the applicant – the probability of a positive selection decision by the evaluator. There was a reliable preference for a textual résumé when participants asked which design they thought would be most effective. However, there was no reliable effect of résumé design on evaluator’s decisions about the applicant whose qualifications were represented.

The domain of welding recently has seen the introduction of numerous potential aids to the practitioners who monitor welding robots (“welbots”) or perform welds themselves. One such aid is the visual augmentation or visualization of particular weld pool parameters. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential effects of a simple, geometric weld pool visualization on the ability of novice welders to relate what they witnessed in welding videos to the completed welds on physically-present pipes (a situation awareness outcome). In addition to participants’ accuracies on the situation awareness measure, perceived usability and subjective workload were also assessed. There was no reliable benefit for the augmented condition compared to the raw, unedited video condition. The results may indicate a task specificity for the type of augmentation utilized or possible limitations of the current rendering methods.

Résumés sometimes contain graphical elements, and the use of such “graphical résumés” may be increasing. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of including different types of graphical elements in a résumé on the most important outcome measure from the perspective of the applicant – the probability of a positive selection decision by the evaluator. There was a reliable preference for a textual résumé when participants asked which design they thought would be most effective. However, there was no reliable effect of résumé design on evaluator’s decisions about the applicant whose qualifications were represented.

Wearable technologies provide many opportunities for HF/E and have applications in a variety of contexts, particularly in consumer products. These devices must be safe and easy to use as they become increasingly complex in functionality. However, because these products are worn, they must meet the needs of clothing. HF/E has researched the safety and comfort needs of clothing, but these needs do not address the entire clothing experience. This is surprising as clothing serves as an ideal test-bed for a number of emerging issues in product design (e.g., research in designers’ expertise). Furthermore, hedonomic (Hancock, 2005) and eudaimonic (Szalma, 2014) design principles can provide an understanding of how to design pleasurable clothing experiences and the motivation behind people’s clothing decisions. In this paper, we will review what HF/E has contributed to clothing design, describe the clothing experience through a hedonomic and eudaimonic lens, present relevant non-HF/E clothing research, and suggest future research directions.

With the current trend toward semi-autonomous welding systems, the typical duties of a skilled welder are likely to transition from that of manual operator to a more supervisory role. The shifting demands on welders necessitates novel welding displays to support an increased variety of tasks. The current work utilizes applied cognitive task analysis to identify the needs of expert welders, specifically in regards to the identification of important sensory cues useful when monitoring the welding process in real-time. Results are presented in a cognitive demands table in a manner intended to be useful to multidisciplinary teams engaged in the development of future welding platforms.

Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles address how viewers’ eyes can be guided through a visual work. Designers refer to such objectives as "creating visual flow." One common technique, “zebra-shading,” is intended to guide eyes through the grid by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. However, the effects of these manipulations have largely not been explored experimentally. We will review the techniques designers use to guide the eyes of their audience, associated psychological foundations, and outline some research done on the graphic design of a specific type of grid: tables. Then, we will describe an experiment wherein participants conducted a visual search task in grids with different shading manipulations. The analysis showed data trending toward improved response time when the target followed the shading.

We present a current multi-study process aimed at developing a hybrid-reality display for use in remote welding. Results from an initial user study and applied cognitive task analysis are discussed along with possible future development directions.

The availability of adjustable lighting controls, with options other than “on” and “off,” have been associated with increased energy savings. In the present study, we describe the way customizable, networked lighting controls are actually used in a recently built research facility that received a formal designation for sustainable design (LEED Gold). In addition to usage patterns, we explored occupants’ knowledge of control operation as well as the expectancies of nonoccupants. We also identified a variety of features that, if redesigned in accordance with HF/E principles, might lead to reduced lighting usage.

Recently, there has been a large push for the use of multimodal interfaces to enhance data visualization. However, supporting data visualization displays with haptic feedback has been slower to develop. In the current paper, we argue that the variables traditionally used by human factors practitioners to assess performance of visualization displays will unfairly bias researchers and designers away from the haptic modality. Instead, researchers will be better served to assess the influence of haptic displays on some of the core strengths of visualization: the depth at which the underlying data may be synthesized and the level to which the display enhances novel or creative hypothesis generation.

Public transportation is an important tool for any city with the population to support it. According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) (2012), between 1995 and 2011, public transportation ridership increased by 34%—a growth rate higher than the 17% increase in U.S. population and higher than the 22% growth in the use of the nation’s highways over the same period. However, even a city with the population to support public transportation will not receive all of its benefits if the implementation is not handled successfully. One requirement for bus transit is that the system be equipped with shelters having minimally the following features: support, visibility, security and information access (Ely, 1998). A field study was conducted to ascertain the impact of these design elements as well as aesthetic pleasantness on users’ perceptions of the shelters. Ultimately, our goal is to implement future results in the creation of a needs-based heuristic framework which will aid designers in the formation of functional bus shelters.

Environmental control and sustainability have become increasingly important in the design of workspaces. Lighting systems in particular have undergone many changes through the incorporation of computer- integrated control panels working in tandem with occupancy and light sensors. Such control panels can allow for increased perceived environmental control which has been shown to improve job satisfaction and productivity (Kroner, 1992; O’Neil, 2004). However, these controls must be designed effectively according to a number of principles regarding interaction design, including good stimulus-response compatibility and adherence to population stereotypes. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usability of one such control panel being used in a smart, green building, and to see how the shortcomings in the design may force users to default to the most familiar setting, which may not be the most energy efficient.

As more designers allow users to customize the look and feel of interfaces, users will be required to recognize the implications of their choices on their future performance, comfort, and enjoyment. Understanding the limits of people’s predictive capabilities may be an important component in identifying why people choose one product over another based on ease of use or why people have difficulties identifying tasks that can be performed together. The purpose of this study is to further explore users’ biases for utilizing the amount of white space in the stimulus as a predictor of task difficulty, to validate discrepancies between predicted task difficulty and performance outcomes found in previous research and the human factors literature, and to identify task-specific strategies that are used to anticipate task difficulty. The study uses the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) in prospective difficulty judgments for these three types of tasks: 1) a stimulus-response compatibility task, 2) a target acquisition task and 3) a perceptual search task. In general, participants predicted lower task demand for designs with more intervening white space. For the visual search task, these estimates of demand were consistent with participants’ actual performance reaction times. However, for the stove design and Fitts’ tasks participants rated tasks that were likely to result in more errors as less challenging suggesting that the type of task is an important factor in participants’ abilities to predict relative task difficulty.

Consumers are constantly presented with new information about new products. The presentation of this information can affect decision making processes by varying the form, organization, and sequence of the information (Kleinmuntz & Schkade, 1993). One organization strategy frequently used in marketing is a product comparison table which allows for side-by-side comparisons to be made. Two decision making heuristics which can occur when using such tables are the “as-if (AI) heuristic,” where all features are treated “as if” they are equal in importance or value, and the other is the “elimination-by-aspect (EBA) heuristic,” where a preferred feature must be present for an alternative to be considered further. One design manipulation that could affect such heuristics when using a table is shading. When applying the Proximity Compatibility Principle (PCP) and theories of visual search, it is easy to see how shading can influence or shape the perceptual acquisition of information and, in turn, affect decision making strategies. This research looked at shading orientation and its effects on decision making during a guided choice task. The study of spontaneous choice is ongoing.