Apperceiving visual elements in human-technology interaction design

Abstract

Visual design of technological artefacts is an integral part of peoples’ experiences in technology-interaction. Visual product properties are capable of eliciting affective responses and multisensorial experiences in human- technology interaction. Current research in the field of human-technology interaction focuses on visual, emotional and multisensory aspects of interaction in addition to functionality and usability. However, the focus has not been on how performative aspects of visual elements affect technology-interaction as a cognitive sense making process shaping human experiences. To design technological contact points to be made sense of, the substance of visual representations requires clarification to conduct argument-based technology- design, and to base design solutions on scientific results. Therefore, research is required to explicate what visual experience is in human-technology interaction, how its constituent factors and underlying dynamics can be studied, and how to design with this research-based knowledge. In this thesis, visual elements contributing to cognitive and affective processes of visual experience in human-technology interaction are examined from an interactionist perspective. The focus is on the role of visual elements in visual usability, aesthetic appeal and emotional aspects in experiencing technological artefacts and to explicate visual experience in appraising visual stimuli via apperception. The explication of visual experience as a cognitive- affective process contributes fundamentally to how visual representations of technological artefacts are made sense of and experienced, and thus, provides a basis for argument-based visual technology-design. As a result of an interactionist approach in examining visual element appraisals in human- technology interaction, a theoretical framework is presented. The framework integrates different dimensions of visual experience with interactionist methodological position and functions as a basis for argument-based visual design. The constituent dimensions of visual experience are visual usability and aesthetic appeal, which are the concepts with which visual experiences are studied and explicated in detail as operationalised in the experiments presented in the seven attached articles. The framework of visual experience can be utilised as a discourse tool in research and design of visual technological designs, and as an explanatory framework for argument-based visual design.