Interactive redesign of products' User eXperience: how to

Abstract

Nowadays, User eXperience (UX) is one of the main concerns in developing innovative products. The literature already offers several UX design methods and tools. Among them, the interaction related Mental Models-based UX evaluation method appeared some years ago. Recently, the modular evaluation of key Components of User Experience questionnaire, a tool for quantifying products' UX, integrated this method. The knowledge acquired thanks to this synergy suggested the way to define and exploit guidelines for interactive redesign of the UX of products. Because of their origin, these guidelines encompass all UX characteristics reputed as meaningful like usefulness, subjective feelings, motivational aspects, emotions, etc. Moreover, these guidelines are generic enough to be used in different situations and on different products; their structure and functioning make them independent from the methods and tools used to collect data and to implement them, widening in this way their applicability in almost any UX interactive redesign activity by almost any researcher/practitioner. The redesign suggestions offered by these guidelines, as well as the procedures to collect and analyze the data to define other guidelines and suggest the best ways to implement them, push different competencies (engineers, UX experts, psychologists, etc.) to work in synergy, just like an interactive design context requires. To date, this research defined ten guidelines; a first adoption in the field starts witnessing their goodness and effectiveness. The paper describes in detail how to define and exploit the guidelines, as well as the first adoption of them in a real redesign context. KeywordsProduct User eXperience • Interactive User eXperience redesign guidelines • Mental models • Interaction related mental models (IrMMs)-based UX evaluation method • Components of User Experience (CUE) model