Sensory Modalities and Mental Content in Product Experience

Abstract

Contemporary research in human-technology interaction emphasises the need to focus on what people experience when they interact with technological artefacts. Understanding how people experience products requires detailed investigation of how physical design properties are mentally represented, and the theorisation of how people represent information obtained through different modalities still needs work. The objective of this study is to investigate how people experience modality-related affective aspects of products, using the psychological concept of mental content. For this purpose, we adopt the framework of user psychology, which is the sub-area of psychology involved with investigating cognitive processes implicated in human-technology interaction. In an experiment, N = 36 participants either looked at, touched, or both looked at and touched drinking glasses. The data was collected with thinking aloud protocols and analysed with inductive content analysis. Frequencies of key affects were observed to differ between the sensory modality groups. The differences are explained with the concepts of mental content. Different modalities involve differing content-based rules, which leads to variance in the feelings associated with the products. The theoretical framework and method utilised reveal the emotional values users associate with technologies, which can be used to inform experience driven design processes. The affective categories extracted in the study can be used in constructing evaluation frameworks, which in turn may serve as an effective tool for evaluation in the future. The method of experimentally separating modalities will also be useful when considering evaluation of products with emphasis on multiple modalities.