Investigating the Affective Quality of Motion in User Interfaces to Improve User Experience

Abstract

This study focuses on motion in user interfaces as a design element which can contribute to an improved user experience of digital media entertainment. The design for user experience is necessary to deal with user emotion especially in the entertainment domain. As a means to approach emotion, we studied affective qualities which are the features of an artifact that can influence emotion. In user interface design, motion has not been practically dealt with in this perspective. Through empirical study, we verified that motion plays a significant role in forming the affective quality of user interfaces and found that content type and application type has influence on this effect. Moreover, a preliminary investigation was made on the use of the Effort system from Laban’s theory for the design of motion in terms of affective quality.