Emoscope

Summary

This method focuses on the known divergence between what the user does and what he says he does, between judgments and facts. The main problem is that we can not extract conclusions about the use of a product based on the opinions of the users. We are interested in the visceral and behavioural levels of the human conduct, and we revindicate that the reflective level, which is intellectually driven, must be also evaluated as another behavioural expression. It has to be interpreted from the analysis, but not assumed as if it was knowledge in its literal sense. The Emoscope groups together a set of techniques that aim to enrich the aspects of Emotional Usability in the processes of auditing the Experience of Use from a double approach: intervention on the product (EmoTools) and on the process of design (UseTherapist).

Description

The EmoToolkit allows a rigorous and exhaustive treatment of data of real use. The Emoscope suggests a protocol of intervention that reduces the costs and length of product development and guarantees that the deliverables are useful tools for the design and product development teams. This is possible through the incorporation into the working teams of the UseTherapist, who provides the point of view of the user during the process of design. They assume a function that the manager of the project, orientated to the short term many times, can not absorb. The UseTherapist is a consultant of Usability with experience in functional design, of interface and service, who is present in all the phases of product.

The EmoTools are the emoscope’s software and serve for the agreeing definition of a “palette of feelings” rigorously typified and to adapt this palette to the product that is being analyzed. This allows extracting conclusions with few participants, thanks to the establish of parameters of interpretation contrasted and documented through EmoInfo.

Concerning the product, the EmoTools are the Emotron, the Emotracking and Pulsetron. The Emotron is software that allows the collection of emotional data during a process of test of tasks. It generates diagrams of task, which are authentic radiographies of the emotional evolution of the user that afterwards are crossed and related to the rest of tools. The Emotracker collects data from the Eye Tracking. The output of files is versatile and configurable, but those of common use are: a file of video with the tour of the eye, the points of attention on the interface, a thermal map where the areas the user has looked to are distinguished through different colours and intensity.

Data from the Emotron and Emotracking, associated to the data from user, time and task, is analyzed together with the images of the module of capture of the facial expression of the user during the interaction. In this way, we associate the emotional labels to the facial expression and the protocol of thinking aloud in that precise moment, as well as data of pupillometry and thermal areas in screen.

The Pulsetron is a module in phase of development at the moment, through which we collect polygraphic data and relate it with the rest of the tools to obtain a greater quantity of physiological emotional data.

Strengths

Unlike the traditional Usability, heiress of the standards of Human Computer Interaction, this Emotional approach looks for strategies that allow quantifying aspects related to the experience of the user during the interaction and his index of satisfaction.
The authentic value of the EmoTools, does not come simply from the innovation that each of the tools can provide to measure the Emotional Usability during product usage. Their special relevance lies in the knowledge that is generated in the bank of contents EmoInfo, through advanced systems of treatment of data and Data Warehousing. Through the crossing of results according to type of product, user, task them and they follow different representation/coding standards. 

Weaknesses

The Emotools have to be used together (crossed and related to the rest of tools) because the data obtained individually don’t describe the global experience.

References describing the method

Cristina Bustillo (2007) Emoscope: An Emotional Usability Tool. Formalization and Application in User- Centered Design (UCD). Doctoral Thesis.

Emoscope, the New Methodology for Emotional Usability and User Centred Design (UCD): Application to Design of Wearable Computing for Healthcare. Internal publication.

Patau, X. (2000) Usabilidad Emocional. Publicaciones web User Lab, La Salle Transfere?ncia de Tecnologia. Arti?culo publicado en Tribuna Digital y en Ziamari. 

Patau, X. Seduccio?n Frente a Usabilidad ¿O Estamos Hablando de lo Mismo? Publicaciones web User Lab, La Salle Transfere?ncia de Tecnologia. 

Calvo-Ferna?ndez, A. Propuesta Metodolo?gica para la Cuantificacio?n Emocional en Usabilidad. Publicaciones web User Lab, La Salle Transfere?ncia de Tecnologia.

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