DESIGN REQUIREMENTS FOR EASE OF OPERATION OF CONSUMER ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS USED FOR COOKING
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Date
2020-05
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
AAU, Jorhat
Abstract
In the past few years there has been a tremendous change in the
consumer electronic market with availability of wide ranges of products. Though the
people possess these products and are dependent on it but still they are not satisfied
since they face problems while using it, especially in case of products used for cooking
activities. These problems are not related to the technical problems but with usability
problems while using the user interface. User interface is the panel through which the
users interact with the products. It may be due to incorporation of multiple functions in
the products along with digitalization of user interface; in many cases the use of
products is becoming complex. There is a gap between the intention of the
manufacturers and the needs and understanding of the users while using these products.
Solution lies in following a framework of guidelines on design requirements for ease of
operation of the products, which can reduce these usability problems of user interface.
These guidelines should be based on the opinion of users, their needs, etc. This will not
only increase the usability of the product but will also try to capture the market in long
run. Keeping these points in view the present study was undertaken with the following
objectives (1) to study the Taxonomy of user Interfaces of Consumer Electronic
Products used for cooking. (2) to identify the usability problems in use of selected
products. (3) to generate design requirements for ease of operation of a selected product.
The study was conducted in three phases. In the phase I, data on different consumer
electronic products possessed by the respondents, dependency on the products,
problems faced by the users, etc were collected through a survey. For the survey a total
of 200 samples were selected randomly from Jorhat town by following purposive
sampling procedure. In the Phase II, a user workshop was conducted to find out the
design requirement of user interface. The information generated from the user workshop
was used for developing mock up models/stimuli for further laboratory analyses. While
developing the stimuli paired preference test was performed. Finally 32 stimuli were
selected for the next phase of analyses in the laboratory. The user workshop was
conducted with 40 numbers of respondents (20 percent of sampled respondents). In
Phase III of the study, design requirements for user interface were generated for ease of
operation of the selected product through usability study by using eye tracking
experiment. The gathered data revealed that the respondents possess almost all types of
electronic appliances and are dependent on it but still they are they have fear in using it.
This fear is mostly because of the complicated user interfaces. In order to study the
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usability problems, the different aspects of dimensions of taxonomy of the user interface
was studied in details. It was seen from the analyses of data that user interfaces of many
of the consumer electronic products are not user friendly. Especially, in case of
microwave oven the interface is problematic due to the presence of many functions.
From the paired preference test few guidelines came into foreface. These guidelines
were people mostly preferred font size of 7.5 point with black font in white background,
regarding the position of user interface the respondents mostly prefer vertical down
position. Buttons were more preferred than knobs. From the eye tracking experiment
three aspects were tested and it was found that the respondents prefer to have the
start/stop button at the middle of the panel. The number of buttons in the interface
should be adequate, it should neither be too less nor too more for ease of operation and
as regards to colour contrast the mostly preferred combination found was white font in
black background.