Research Of A Usability Evaluating Method For Application Software Based On Affective Computing And Kansei Engineering

In the period of user experience economy, "User Centred Design" becomes a trend in the area of product design and development. As one of the most useful tools to promote users' experience and satisfaction, usability evaluating plays an increasingly important role in the process of product design. However, most of the studies on usability evaluating are from the qualitative point of view, they are lack of theoretical and technical basis, especially the quantitative research methods to collect and process usability data. Furthermore, the nature of usability is an index to reflect users' experience during the interaction with product, users' evaluation and experience should be the focuses in the study of usability actually. So, considering the current situation of usability study and the nature of usability, this thesis tries to combine the theories and methods of affective computing and Kansei engineering, and gives a research on usability from users' emotion experience which is just the nature of usability. In order to evaluate the usability level of application softwares accurately and analyze the usability problems deeply, This thesis proposes a new usability evaluating method which is based on the relationship between users' emotion experience and application softwares'usability. The main jops that this thesis has done are as fellows:First, in order to find the junction between affective computing and Kansei engineering, this thesis proposes to use emotions words as an approach which chuld combine these two theories to apply in the study of usability evaluation. Based on emotion words, an emotion evaluation scale for application softwares is established, which can measure users* emotional states easily and exactly, and make it possible to have quantitative researchs on usability.Second, this thesis establishs an cognitive model and an emotion model of users based on the operation procedure analysis of representative tasks of products, for the purpose of deeply analysing usability problems from the cognitional and emotional point of view. In order to get the quantitative relationship between products'usability and users'emotion, this thesis use the PLS method to eatablish the regression model between usability indexs and emotion words.Third, integrating the emotion evaluation scale, the PLS model between usability indexs and emotion words, as well as the cognitive model and the emotion model of users, this thesis proposes a new usability evaluating method which is based on afffective computing and Kansei engineering theories. This method is proposed from the perspective of the users' emotion experience, and it takes the quantitative relationship between application softwares' usability and users' emotion as the core foundation. This method explores a new train of thought to take the study of usability evaluation.