Interface as a Medium: Creating Effective Visual Services through a User-Experiences Perspective

Abstract

The growing market for robotic services reflects the rapidly expanding demand for such services in personal and domestic settings, according to the Service Robot Statistics of the International Federation of Robotics (IFR, 2013). It is also reasonable to argue that the design for robotic services is a topic that merits considerable attention regarding both technical and supply aspects. Supported by Promate Electronics Inc., the Visual Information Design Lab conducted a Smart Vending Machine UI design project to explore new campus-based service possibilities. Drawing on the ideas associated with this experimental design, the current study proposes an interactive interface that functions as a medium capable of motivating users to voluntarily interact with a vending machine. Also, this pilot service is realizable and testable in a campus setting. To achieve these tasks, the current study has analyzed four user types relative to users' potential behaviors, including goal-oriented behaviors, pioneer behaviors, observer behaviors, and risk-taker behaviors (Lin & Lai, 2013). The current study's design strategy has the objective of preparing for an effective visualized interface that helps launch a campus service. Under this umbrella, the current study's design team conducted their design research by using a 4D (discover, define, develop, and deliver) design method to produce an interface that would effectively stimulate four variables–attention, interest, desire, and action–from the perspective of visual-information design. Visual-information design is capable not only of delivering messages to its viewers, but also of enhancing services that structure and represent concepts. This approach is a way to merge aesthetics and functionality into one design practice for fully satisfying users' needs. Understanding a project's targeted users is the backbone of design processes from the very beginning to the end. This project analyzes user types and investigates users' reactions to a type of smart vending machine, revealing how and how much a design practice satisfies the needs of users. While interface-based visual information is a major element with which merchants build and maintain relationships with customers, it is important to address how users interact with designed representations. In this way, one can gauge not only how visual information functions in real practices but also how targeted users respond to the visual information. This is an essential stage in designing a robotic service and in undertaking a marketing activity: designers must understand users' experiences from outer indications (behaviors and reactions) and from inner gain (information learned and perceptions). The results are great resources for design teams and strategists seeking to enhance the quality of visual information and to create multiple-level services available on vending machines.