Abstract
Optimising sensory product qualities is a priority for automotive manufacturers when developing human–machine interfaces, as user experience frameworks consider sensory aesthetics to be a main influencing factor of the overall judgement of product appeal. This empirical study examines whether users’ overall judgements of product appeal can be predicted from measures of non-visual aesthetic qualities. Ninety-one UK owners of Supermini segment cars assessed five examples of rotary temperature dials. Factor analysis gave four clear factors common across all samples, of which ‘unrefined loudness’ and ‘positivity/precision’ predicted up to 26% variance in the hedonic score; both factors were similarly important in the regression models. Significant differences in appeal were observed between the samples; however, there were no effects due to age or gender.
Practitioner Summary: The research shows that the overall appeal of automotive rotary dials is partially predicted by their non-visual aesthetics. These findings are applicable to the design of any products where improving the user experience is a goal, as it demonstrates that user experience models are applicable to product domains other than computing and information technology.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding this research through the Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (WIMRC).