Interaction Design Methods Project 1 Comfort Tianjie Li DEMOGRAPHY • 20-‐25 Every participant is between 20 and 25 so that they are the same generation and under the similar historical background. • Undergraduate or graduate students They have high education experience. • Graduating soon and stressful in study or job hunting They are undergoing the thing that we may consider uncomfortable for them, for instance, pressure, choices and challenges. • International students They have same culture background and experience culture changing of their living environments WHAT IS COMFORT • Comfort can be either mental or physical comfort, or both. Comfort can be either from mental aspect or from physical aspect and with one of or both of the aspects being satisfied. Among all the participants, two of them pointed out that there are actually two kinds of comfort, mental and physical comfort. They all agree that comfort is kind of feeling/status, which means relief and shows no burdens in body or heart. For body comfort, one participant said it is calculated with concrete factors such as body relax, heart rate etc. and she thinks that it is comfort if these data meters are normal. Either of these two aspects of comfort can make users feel like comfortable. • Either mental or physical comfort has been satisfied, there will be a reduction on the other uncomfortable side. Sometimes one can either focus on metal comfort or physical comfort that means one of the two comforts can be sacrificed for the other one. For example, we all know that people doing excessive running when they are under big pressure. Or someone will watch funny TV program when they had a toothache. • Comfort is not being excited, but calm.
From the interview, when the participants recalled their experiences about comfort, mostly they defined it not a happy or exciting moment but instead a calm state. • Comfort sometimes is an unaware status that people even can’t notice that they are in a comfort environment. When I first asked every participant in this interview, he or she will be silent to think over about comfort experience and claimed that it is too difficult to remember a kind of comfort experience. • Comfort can be changed in the same situation. There is no things suppose to be comfortable in all situations. Instead, doing kind of things, which can reduce the intense or stress generated from another thing is defined as comfort. • Comfort generates from comparison with uncomforted. Comfort can be felt when there is a kind of feeling to be compared with other status. Also, comfort may exist in the situation, which should not have been a comfort environment but it switches to a comfort state under some circumstances. This kind of change will make the user feel comfortable. That indicates comfort status is a kind of state, which compares with other uncomfortable situations. DESIGN GUIDELINES 1. Unawareness experience-‐the status that people are satisfied is that they don’t realize this fact. According to what we have learnt about ubiquitous computing which inserts seamlessly into our daily life. Based on what I acquired from the user interviews, I think product design related with comfort dimension should be like kind of service design, which can systematically immerse the users into kind of status that makes them forget about unhappy stuff, big pressure. In terms of this, future technology applications can focus on how to distract users’ negative emotions and generates positive emotions for them. For one direction, we all know that there are large sorts of (mobile) applications, which aim at offering entertainment to people who are stressful. But most of them are doing the experience design through which to make people feel excited in order to help them to be comfortable and relax. However, the truth is that people are likely to feel more tired or stressful after that. Then they will either choose to
addict into it or seek for another way to relax. What I suggest the entertainment stuff to provide what really makes people feel calm and relax both their mental and physical aspects. 2. Combine artifact with environment to offer comfort. Another potential design implication is that how to make environment together with the artifact within the environment which supposes to be a comfortable place for people really comfortable. What we have acquired from the user interviews is that people clearly know and care about both mental and physical comfort and it is better for the design solution to both satisfy these two aspects. For example, nowadays there are many high-‐tech devices used for cooking emerging in our kitchens, but for the housewives, especially those who are not experts in dealing with high-‐tech, how to design the usage which may not have so much learning and memory burden. In this case, it might meet the physical comfort such as the housewives are not required a lot of physical work when doing housework, but in another aspect it raises the requirements in mental aspects. The high-‐tech equipment might not show the atmosphere of family and etc. and these will all cause the problem in comfort aspect.
APPENDIX Participant A Male, 24, student Answer 1: Comfort is a state that you could immerse yourself in one kind of positive emotion. That is to say you are enjoying something. Answer 2: I could say that when I go to the gym, I don't feel comfortable at first. But soon as I get warmer and gradually focus on fitness, I feel more comfortable. Actually it's not all about physical adaptation but mental process instead. It's like when I do exercises in the beginning, I am still thinking of my assignments or other annoying things that could distract me. However, as I gradually warm up I focus more on fitness and ignore those things at the same time. I feel comfortable in this state. Participant B Female, 21, student Answer 1: I would like to describe it as relax of the heart. A kind of feeling comes from the deep soul. Answer 2: I said happy birthday to someone. Usually, he wouldn’t reply anything I said to him. But that day, he said thanks. That was a relief of my heart. And I think that can be described as comfort. Participant C Female, 24, student Answer 1: What comfort to me is that I am satisfied with the current status. There’s no unexpected setback and all my plans go well. That’s mental comfort. While for physical comfort, it should be when encountering with things, stay calm and don’t be nervous. Answer 2: Having a soul mate with whom I can communicate whatever I want and thus I’m not feeling lonely at all. I don’t think there’s an experience that I can make myself truly comfortable. Or otherwise, stay at home and surf the Internet or play computer games. Another experience is that when I talk
with my boss, not work or study but gossip…especially relax and comfortable.