Testing Methodologies

Through research it has been discovered that when conducting emotional engagement testing towards brands, PR companies first test the participants on their brand engagement and then assign them to a group based on their emotional response level. Some people have high emotional engagement towards brands, others much less. By grouping participants in this way, it is possible to see Usability testing with respect to  people's differing emotional engagement levels.

It is proposed that this can feed into the groups research, by pre testing people and working out their prior engagement levels, this will add more quality to the data gained from the usability study.

FaceReader

FaceReader 6 by Track Sys is a piece of software that uses a webcam to capture emotions a person is expressing. A demonstration of the software has been arranged so that the group can evaluate its suitability for the project. It's thought that if it works, it can help with establishing the kinds of emotions that users feel when both interacting with the websites and viewing the adverts.

http://www.tracksys.co.uk/product-details.php?id=20

Guys, we need to talk! Using google hangouts!

http://www.google.com/intl/en/hangouts/

We have used google hangouts for our group meeting since our mentor Raida recommended 

us to use it, very handy and high recommended for you to check where you are ( I mean project)
Even the biggest group in our class (yes, the huge astronautic group) can fit it the "chat room", google hangout allows up to 9 people to meet simultaneously, simply log in and try it out!

[eye tracker] Test on Tobii X120 eye tracker

The weather is okay outside so I decide to reach Tobii the eye tracker located somewhere on campus.

Don't know why the door shutting me down from time to time, after some waiting and talking I finally get the access to the system.

Since I am the only one in the lab so I have to be the subject for the testing of the system, and it works well! The image above is the screenshot I made from the section that I tryout the website of Kingston University. It's a heatmap for an intuitive, easy way for the researcher to understand where the participant is looking or not.

I also learned we have to mount the special mounting board to hold the device and and extra arm for the camera to capture the eye motion on other mobile devices I metioned yesterday, we will see if we need to do the extra part of research or not.

Glad to know Tobii works well and I have some fun play with it!
You can do it, simple and easy, just don't forget to bring a flash drive with you, the exported video size is quite big!

[eye tracker] interesting clip of previous study by Dr Jo Van Herwegen at Kingston University's Department of Psychology

Oh, cute baby! (Watch the clip and you will know why I say so.)
Dr Jo Van Herwegen mentioned she will consider integrate monitoring brain activity and eye tracker together to get better research data, I think we are on the right track because we have that idea in mind as well and about to put into practice! 

I will be going to play with the Tobii eye tracker a bit tomorrow while our UX strategy, Shaleen going to find out the functions of Neurosky and UX architect, Dave on his way to reach the facial recognition software. Looking forward to it and I will bring my tablet and phone to see if the Tobii system can work well while I operating the website on those devices. We haven't included multi-platform tasks on our branded UX evaluation at the moment, however, know the function and equipment better will definitely benefit our up coming testing task.

http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-x60x120-eye-tracker/

UX Content Role Redefined

The specific task for UX content role in this teamwork context would be listed as follow:

Investigate brands and industries to better fit our aim: evaluation of branded UX

Produce Usability Testing related documents such as target audience profiling, personas, metrics etc.

Produce and develop the material for the testing method UX architect comes with 

Work closely with UX architect producing content for better wire-frames/ prototype delivery

Shift from Cars to Smartphones

After the 1st presentation and discussion with Vesna and other classmates we concluded that cars won't match our user group and the personas so we changed to mobile phones/smart phones and the brands we selected were likewise:

1. Apple
2. Samsung
3. HTC

UX Architect Role Redefined

After feedback the last few weeks, we have redefined our roles to better suit the project. We are now looking to produce a basic prototype, so my original idea of handling wire-framing will now be necessary. However, as this is only one part of the project, and the Best Practice Model is a bigger part of it, I have refined my role so that I will handle the production of the testing methodology.

My new role redefined:

• Investigate methods and trends for testing emotional engagement, in addition to using Shaleen's research on tools
• Investigate methods and trends for Usability Testing
• Produce a testing method based on this research
• Look into producing wire-frames for prototype

Experimental design, the best practice model?

Having a presentation in front of everyone in the class along with Professor Vesna and Martin today,
we are still working on our Branded UX experimental design at the moment, the the simple before/ after or input/ output design will probably server as the base for our future testing/ experiment, we will know it very soon.

Honda Crazy Advert

While going through car adverts I came across this crazy advert of Honda R type.
The advert is called 'The Other Side'

While viewing the advert you have to press 'R' key after every few seconds to understand.
Nice interactive and interesting advert.

Adverts for Usability Test

While preparing for the presentation we were also deciding the time plan of our usability test.

I was working on the adverts where I was supposed to collect 3 good recent adverts on the decided Brands.

Jaguar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bls1KKDwmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYm8paWEOLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgFDQEnThR8

Ford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRh6isMyuYA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5h-VL8obYY&list=PL_AQadacLqzltu8TawI1ThqyZaYqGB_DA&index=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBoWMl6vLJ4&index=4&list=PL_AQadacLqzltu8TawI1ThqyZaYqGB_DA

Land Rover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKagmlyb1ig (2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8RHEzkQWB0#t=16 (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9sxC8b1dI&list=PL4AFAB340D400D6B3 (2011)

It was fun going through the videos of different car brands and how adverts of one brand vary from another. The best adverts were of the Jaguar because of the actors they select like Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston #itsgoodtobebad ;)

Preparation for Presentation

So we have our presentation coming up on 25th of November 2014  as Dave has already mentioned in his post - Planning and Presentation we our working really hard for it.

Being a UX Strategist I was working on the research part of the presentation where my task was to find the methods for measuring emotional engagement, why do you need it and which method we will be using in our usability test and why.

The 5 different ways of measuring emotional engagement were:

1. NeuroSky
2. Facial Recognition
3. Galvanic Response
4. Pupil Response
5. Eye tracker

And the method we selected was 

NeuroSky & Eye Tracker

Because these were the only two equipments available.

Planning and Presentation

The previous week has been focused on writing a scope of work document. We now have a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve, and just as importantly, a plan on how to get there. We are currently tackling phase one of the project, which is emotional engagement measurement. Shaleen (UX Strategy) has started research into what technologies would be suitable for the project, and we have chosen our adverts (see below) for the testing. Dave (UX Architect) is researching how to structure the tests, based on Shaleen's research.

In addition to this we are also preparing for our presentation which is due on the 25th November.

Jaguar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bls1KKDwmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYm8paWEOLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgFDQEnThR8

Ford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRh6isMyuYA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5h-VL8obYY&list=PL_AQadacLqzltu8TawI1ThqyZaYqGB_DA&index=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBoWMl6vLJ4&index=4&list=PL_AQadacLqzltu8TawI1ThqyZaYqGB_DA

Land Rover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKagmlyb1ig (2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8RHEzkQWB0#t=16 (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9sxC8b1dI&list=PL4AFAB340D400D6B3 (2011)

Scope of Work

After speaking to Raida on a Google Hangouts meeting, we have a much clearer idea of where we are going. We have amended the aim slightly (again!) and it is shown below. From this we have also drafted a scope of work document, and are awaiting feedback on it from Raida.

Aim:

The aim of this project is to suggest a best practice model for testing branded user experience by focusing on both emotional engagement as well as cognitive factors. Existing methods measuring emotional engagement are often applied to advertising, and this project seeks to incorporate these methods into the testing branded UX. This best practice model will be borne out of usability testing via different methods highlighted during research. After reviewing the data, an argument for a particular methodology will be put forth, tested and the outcome documented in the form of a report.

Let's do some research

After defining the Aim of our Project we all started researching on what is Emotional Engagement and what are the differences ways to measure it.

We came across 3 ways to measure emotional engagement
- GSR - Galvanic Skin Response.
- Eyetracker.
- EEG

Dave researched on Eyetracker, Peter researched on GSR and I took up EEG.

After some good hour of researching on the same I came across an interesting article written by Andrew Schall. It talked about what is emotional engagement, its use in user experience design and different ways to measure it.

I would like to share this article, so here is a link to it.

New Methods for Meauring Emotional Enegagment

GSR related summary

• Modern GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) or SCR (Skin Conductance Response), measures

a.electrical conductance

b.sweat-gland activity

as an indication of psychological or physiological arousal.

• GSR has been proven that 

a.correlated with marketplace performance, can be used as a tool to predict sales performance, promise of higher predictive validity that data generated from consumer self-reports.

b.GSR readings are co-temporaneous with the presentation of the actual stimuli, they permit the precise identification of the more motivating and less motivating subelements.

• Since the GSR has been invented and used for over 130 years, it's trustworthy.

• GSR measurement equipment is highly sensitive and affordable.

• GSR readings may be analysis by computer for greater scale of test.

Aim of Project

After a lecture from Steve Webley, along some helpful feedback from both him and Raida confirming the direction we have to take, the aim of the project has been revised. The new aim is stated below.

The aim of this project is to suggest a best practice model for testing branded user experience by utilising existing methods. This model will be borne out of usability testing via different methods highlighted during research. After reviewing the data, an argument for a particular methodology will be put forth in the form of a report.

UX Strategist Role

My role for the Multichannel Branded Ux project was Ux - Strategist. The role is as interesting as the name is. 

According to Garrett's diagram Ux- Strategy is the base of Ux Design Chart.

- It is the first step occurring when you determine user needs and defining objective.

- It is about defining what kind of user experience you want.

UX Content Role

Finding out my role for the Multi Channel Branded UX project was UX content, I reviewed a few interesting sources mentioned the idea of it, here's one, how the content strategy done, by Kristina Halvorson, author of the book Content Strategy for the Web. a content strategy defines:

• key themes and messages
• recommended topics
• content purpose (i.e., how content will bridge the space between audience needs and business requirements)
• content gap analysis
• metadata frameworks and related content attributes
• search engine optimization (SEO), and
• implications of strategic recommendations on content creation, publication, and governance.”

Also the 7 qualities that UX content should provide,(The User Experience Honeycomb - Peter Morville, 2004)

So the UX content role is not only about maintaining the website, it also decides what, how, and when the content going to seen by the user, and makes the best sense for the user experience. UX content to UX is like the editor-in-chief (EIC) to newspaper. Every website (app or mobile site) fights for the chance to be seen by the right users, at the right time (right timing as well), after all, content is still king, but it has to be seen.

UXBOOTH

UXMAG

Peter - UX Content 

Setting a Target

After meeting on Friday, we decided to outline a brief overview of where we envisage this project heading. From this we can start to draft a scope of work document and divide the tasks between us.

"The way we envisage the project scope entails us taking three car brands - two luxury and one mass market, namely Land Rover, Jaguar and Ford - and comparing people's brand perception of these companies. We will compare and contrast our users' initial perceptions of the brand with their perceptions after direct experience via computer interface. 

In the case of difference, we will make suggestions as to how the user experience can be improved to match or exceed users' initial perceptions. Building on from Raida Shakiry's thesis, we will measure emotional engagement to the brands rather than just cognitive factors, such as usability. 

To measure emotional engagement, we will make use of EEG equipment in addition to more typical data gathering excerises such as questionaires and interviews, This will allow us to get data that in theory is less skewed by the biases in user response."

 From this statement the project planning can begin.

Brands

For our project we have decided to take Brands of cars. We choose 3 brands-

1. Jaguar
2. Land Rover 
3. Ford

UX Architect Role

I found out earlier his week that my role for the Multi Channel Branded UX project was UX architect. And I found plenty of conflicting ideas as to what exactly that entailed. Fast forward a few days, and after the workshop I know have a clearer idea of the role.

Summarised as:

• Identify current trends and paradigms with respect to Information Architecture
• Research the roots of these paradigms
• Use the UXD principles and methods, such as personas, to evaluate best solution compared to project brief
• Work closely with UX Content to continually inform each other of progress and ideas
• Deliverables:Apply gained knowledge to create wireframes
  Choose software to create wireframes; justifying the selection.

With that defined, I'd better make a start.

Dave - UX Architect