Hedonic and ergonomic quality aspects determine a software's appeal

By Marc Hassenzahl, Axel Platz, M. Burmester, K. Lehner. International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2000

537 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present study examines the role of subjectively perceived ergonomic quality (e.g. simplicity, controllability) and hedonic quality (e.g. novelty, originality) of a software system in forming a judgement of appeal. A hypothesised research model is presented. The two main research question are: (1) Are ergonomic and hedonic quality subjectively different quality aspects that can be independently perceived by the users? and (2) Is the judgement of appeal formed by combining and weighting ergonomic and hedonic quality and which weights are assigned? The results suggest that both quality aspects can be independently perceived by users. Moreover, they almost equally contributed to the appeal of the tested software prototypes. A simple averaging model implies that both quality aspects will compensate each other. Limitations and practical implication of the results are discussed.

Subfields: Information Systems and Management, Social Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/290cdb5f9a6f0917e3e0ee4511fcafed3c3edb4b

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Citations in the corpus

The influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on user engagement: The case of online shopping experiences (2010, background): “For e.g., Hassenzahl et al. (2000) demonstrated that users' evaluation of seven software prototypes was dependent on both hedonic and ergonomic (utilitarian) perceptions.”
Needs, affect, and interactive products - Facets of user experience (2010, background): “Hassenzahl and colleagues (Hassenzahl et al., 2000; Hassenzahl, 2001, 2003) argued that the perceived qualities of an interactive product can be divided into instrumental, pragmatic and non-instrumental, self-referential, hedonic aspects (see also Batra and Ahtola, 1990).”
The Interplay of Beauty, Goodness, and Usability in Interactive Products (2004, methodology): “Inaddition,previousresearchon hedonicquality(e.g.,Hassenzahl,2002;Hassenzahl,Platz,Burmester,& Lehner,2000)foundbothhedonicandpragmaticattributestosignificantly contributetothegeneralappealofproducts.”
The Inference of Perceived Usability From Beauty (2010, background): “This follows from Hassenzahl and colleagues (Hassenzahl, 2001, 2003; Hassenzahl, Platz, Burmester, & Lehner, 2000) who have argued that the perceived qualities of a product contributing to goodness can be roughly divided into instrumental, pragmatic and noninstrumental, self-referential, hedonic…”
Current practice in measuring usability: Challenges to usability studies and research (2006, background): “Outside the studies reviewed, papers discuss correlations between different aspects of usability (Frøkjær et al., 2000; Hassenzahl et al., 2000).”
Validating the Fun Toolkit: an instrument for measuring children’s opinions of technology (2008, background): “A useful model that is along these lines is the one proposed by Hassenzahl et al. (2000) which defines a new metric ‘software appeal’ which is in part dependent on ergonomic aspects like simplicity and controllability and is also affected by more hedonic aspects, these include novelty and originalit”
Methods for Evaluating Interactive Information Retrieval Systems with Users (2009, unknown): “[124] discuss the notion of hedonic quality.”
UX Curve: A method for evaluating long-term user experience (2011, background): “Even, in the existing longitudinal studies of user experience, the investigated time periods are relatively short, ranging from short test tasks [22, 23, 24] to five weeks of usage [17].”
Old wine in new bottles or novel challenges: a critical analysis of empirical studies of user experience (2011, background): “Initial UX research departed from a stated dissatisfaction with removing usability problems and improving task completion time [26, 40].”