UX Usability Testing for Emotional Engagement

This week marks the end of the usability testing. After the methodology document was written, it was necessary to test to see if the theory stood up to practice.

The testing was broken down into two phases. Phase One was an emotional engagement test. Research has shown that it is common in the advertising world to measure participant's emotional engagement level so they may be grouped into sets of high, medium and low emotional engagement. Doing so allows a greater understanding of the results gathered.

To measure baseline emotional engagement, users were shown adverts for three brands, whilst being video recorded. The video recording was then run through FaceReader 6 software which gave a readout on the emotional response of the participant, who were then grouped accordingly.

Originally it was proposed that a Neurosky Mind Reader would be used, which measures brain waves to gauge emotional engagement. However, the group had issues getting this to work. As a results, the FaceReader 6 software was used instead.

Phase Two of the testing was a standard usability test. Afterwards, however, the video recording made of the participants was run through the FaceReader 6 software to measure emotional engagement. The purpose of this was to see if participants grouped as high, medium or low engagement produced similar readings. If this was the case, it could be strongly argued that pre screening participants for their emotional engagement is worthwhile, and helps to contextualise the results gained from usability testing.

In addition to making participants watch adverts and partake in usability testing, participants were asked their thoughts on both the brands featured and their overall perception of brands general. This was measured before viewing the adverts, after viewing, and after UX usability testing.

Results of the testing will be analysed this coming week.

communicate like a cat? brain wave cat ears

While we trying to use Neurosky as one of the method to understand branded ux,
I find an interesting product using the same technology on the internet, it calls Necomimi,
means cat's ears in Japanese, let's see how it works.

http://www.necomimi.com/HowNecomimiWorks.aspx

Well, don't know if the real cats express their feeling that way, a real good example of commercialization of researching equipment. However, for our research, don't know simple reading indicates that user is focused or relaxed can be interpret in to emotional engaged or not, anyway, we will try to find out.

Emotional Engagement Technologies

The group has now tested both the Neurosky, Eye Tracker and Face Reader technologies. The FaceReader shows a range of emotions that the user experiences whilst being filmed. Problems were encountered with calibrating the software so that it measured neutral when the participant's expression was neutral. This was best evidenced by myself, when I used it the emotion that was read was 'angry' a lot of the time!

The FaceReader analyses a section of a recording of a person's face, showing what emotions they are currently displaying. However, it does not show how emotionally engaged a user is, which is want is more important for what we are trying to measure.

Tomorrow we hope to look at the technologies and make a decision as to which best serves our needs.

NeuroSky

So for our usability test we decided to use NeuroSky as one of the methods to measure emotional engagement. It was my part to arrange NeuroSky and test it so I contacted Tim from the Sony Team as they were also using NeuroSky for their project. Tim helped me to get in contact with one of the team members who was handling the neurosky device. We contacted each through email and once they were done with their work we got our hands on the device. Hurrayy!!

But the sad part was when Dave and I started testing is it didn't work accordingly. We wanted a wireless one and this was not what we were looking for so we had to cancel the NeuroSky. 

Wireframing - Using Axure

As part of our final deliverable, we have decided to include a prototype website that has been redesigned with respect to feedback gained during the usability testing portion of our proof of methodology.

As architect, my role encompasses the creation of wireframes for this prototype. Therefore, it was important to gain some experience in wireframing tools.

Axure is used by over 40% of UX professionals, and a educational licence is available for it - it seemed to be a good option for this project. A basic wireframe for a different site has been started. This is just to learn the basics so a decent prototype can be made later on once the recommendations for improvements to the website have been made.