Developing an instrument to assess the impact of attitude and social norms on user selection of an interface design: a repertory grid approach Willem-Paul Brinkman Steve Love

Topics  Research Motivation  Repertory Grid Analysis – initial instrument  Survey – validation instrument  Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection  Conclusions & Future Research

Ultimate aim is to understand why people select a specific design for their device. Motivation

User Personality Intention of selecting a specific type of design  However, correlations were relatively small (Brinkman and Fine, 2005)  A less direct approach is needed as users might have different criteria to evaluate a design. Because of colour or theme

Motivation Attitude towards selecting a specific design type Subjective Norm Relative importance Adoption of Theory of Reason Action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980) Intention of selecting a specific type of design User Personality

Research questions 1.What criteria do people use to evaluate a design? 2.What impact do attitude and social norm have on the selection of a design? Motivation

Different social context 1.Public application (mobile phone)? 2.Private application (PC multimedia player)? Motivation

Aim - Develop two evaluation instruments to assess people’s attitude and social norm towards: 1.Mobile phone 2.PC Multimedia Player Skins First question: what criteria do people use to evaluate a phone or Multimedia Player Skin? Motivation

Repertory Grid Analysis  Personal Construct Theory: Everyone interprets (or constructs) events and their universe differently.  Constructs are bipolar, for example to describe friends: easy-going versus tense, reliable versus unreliable. etc  Repertory Grid Analysis: a method to elicit these specific constructs. George Kelly

Repertory Grid Analysis General Procedure  Split up triad into 2 groups  Label the groups  Rate the object on construct  Create Grid

Repertory Grid Analysis General Procedure  Split up triad into 2 groups  Label the groups  Rate the object on construct  Create Grid Male Female

Repertory Grid Analysis General Procedure  Split up triad into 2 groups  Label the groups  Rate the object on construct  Create Grid MaleFemale

Repertory Grid Analysis General Procedure  Split up triad into 2 groups  Label the groups  Rate the object on construct  Create Grid  Looking for similarities between the constructs  Apply a Factor Analysis

Repertory Grid Analysis Method  Participants  Material  Procedure  20 Participants  Brunel University Students or Staff members  10 males, 10 females  Mean age of 26.5 years (SD = 4.84)

Repertory Grid Analysis Method  Participants  Material  Procedure Photo of 15 mobile phones taken from Mobile Digest news website.

Repertory Grid Analysis Method  Participants  Material  Procedure Screen prints from 15 skins taken from earlier study (Brinkman and Fine, 2005)

Repertory Grid Analysis Method  Participants  Material  Procedure  Two sessions: Mobile phone and Skins  Sequence of the sessions was counterbalanced  10 randomly drawn triads, with no repeating triads  Afterwards rating the phone and skins on the 10 constructs  Total interview took around 2 hours

Repertory Grid Analysis Analysis  Data  Rules  Mobile Phone  Skins  200 mobile phone and 200 skin constructs  Factor Analysis used principal-component extraction method and varimax rotation  Aim -> to identify common constructs themes used by multiple participants.

Repertory Grid Analysis Analysis  Data  Rules  Mobile Phone  Skins Selection criteria to select component 1.Factor loadings (correlations) below 0.69 were ignored. 2.Components should have constructs loading from at least 5 different participants 3.A clear semantic relationship between the labels of the construct should exist.

Repertory Grid Analysis Analysis  Data  Rules  Mobile Phone  Skins 3 Components / dimensions Appearance of the mobile phone

Repertory Grid Analysis Analysis  Data  Rules  Mobile Phone  Skins 4 Components / Dimensions

Survey  Aim  Procedure  Participants  Analysis  Results Validate the scales obtained from the Repertory Gird Analysis

Survey  Aim  Procedure  Participants  Analysis  Results To evaluate the middle mobile phone/skin with the scales provided

Survey  Aim  Procedure  Participants  Analysis  Results  156 students of the School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics (Brunel, UK)  Average age 23.6 years (SD = 4.79)  57 female, 75 male (24 did not report gender)

Survey  Aim  Procedure  Participants  Analysis  Results  Reliability analysis to examine the internal consistency of the scales within dimension  Dimension “Reliability” for mobile phone removed Cronbach’s alpha < 0.7  Factor Analysis  Component with Eigen value > 1  Scales loading > 0.7

Survey  Aim  Procedure  Participants  Analysis  Results Scales for Mobile Phones Scales for Multimedia Player skins

Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection Attitude towards selecting a specific design type Subjective Norm Intention of selecting a specific type of design Second question: What impact do attitude and social norm have on the selection of a design? Additional information collecting in Grid interviews

 Attitude  Social Norm  Intention  Results  The evaluation (e) of a skin/phone on a scale.  The importance of an evaluation scale (w).  For me, having a skin that is “explaining”, or that is associated with this is? Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection BadGood

 Attitude  Social Norm  Intention  Results  Their belief (b) on how peers, family members, or authority figures would their (participants) phone or skin to score on a construct.  Their willingness (g) to comply with the peers, family members, or authority figure. Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection

 Attitude  Social Norm  Intention  Results  Behavioural intention to select a skin or mobile phone  I would try this on my media player?  I intend to obtain the following mobile phone? Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection unlikelylikely

 Attitude  Social Norm  Intention  Results Social Norm has an impact on phone selection, but not skin selection. Attitude, Social Norm and Design Selection Phone (public)Skin (private) Mean (partial) correlation. *p.<.05.**p<.01.

Research questions 1.What criteria do people use to evaluate a design? 1.Mobile phone: Gender, Ease of Use and Sophistication 2.Multimedia Player skins: Stimulation and Ease 2.What impact do attitude and social norm have on the selection of a design? Social Norm has an impact on phone (public device) selection, but not Multimedia Player (private device) selection. Conclusions

Further research Attitude towards selecting a specific design type Subjective Norm Relative importance Intention of selecting a specific type of design User properties User Personality Gender

Questions Thanks for your attention