Cataloguing physicality values using physical quantitative evaluation method

Abstract

Physical interfaces suffer from interaction complexities leading to usage difficulty and poor acceptance by the end-users. Usability techniques focus on the overall usability issues while overlooking the in-depth physicality aspects of the interface and interaction. This study proposes a physicality-focused quantitative evaluation method (PQEM) to assist embedded system developers in managing the interaction complexities of their products. The acceptance of the embedded system developers towards the proposed method was assessed by means of a user study. The results suggested their strong acceptance. By using this method, we further propose a range of values for appliances, which can be treated as a catalogue or as guidelines as they design and develop physical interfaces. A second user study was conducted to assess the acceptance of embedded system developers for the proposed catalogue. In this study, spatial cognition is concerned in assisting and facilitating the designers and developers in designing physical interfaces of embedded products. We used intensive interviewing as the cognitive method to assess the influence of the catalogue of values from PQEM on performance in designing and developing physical interfaces.