TY - JOUR
T1 - Capturing "cool"
T2 - Measures for assessing coolness of technological products
AU - Sundar, S. Shyam
AU - Tamul, Daniel J.
AU - Wu, Mu
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation under the WCU (World Class University) program funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, S. Korea (Grant No. R31-2008-000-10062-0 ). The authors wish to thank Youjeong Kim, Ki Joon Kim, Jeeyun Oh and Jiaqi Nie for their research assistance.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - These days, when we float an idea for an interface or demo a prototype, the compliment that we crave for is "This is Cool!" Coolness has become a major design goal for HCI professionals. If we are serious about building Cool into our products, we should also be serious about measuring it. With this in mind, we performed a scientific explication of the concept in order to capture the psychological essence of "coolness," covering a number of characteristics such as trendiness, uniqueness, rebelliousness, genuineness and utility. Based on the discourse in the literature, we arrived at a series of questionnaire measures, which we subjected to an exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 (N=315). The factor structure that emerged was tested through a confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 (N=835), in which American and Korean respondents rated their perceptions of a variety of old and new technologies. Converging evidence suggests that in order for an interface to be rated as cool, it should not only be attractive and original, but also help the user assert his/her uniqueness or subcultural identity. Study 3 (N=317) tested the content validity of our factors by comparing them with a holistic evaluation of coolness and arrived at a parsimonious three-factor solution for conceptualizing it in terms of originality, attractiveness and subcultural appeal. Together, these constitute tangible user criteria that designers can strategically address and researchers can systematically measure.
AB - These days, when we float an idea for an interface or demo a prototype, the compliment that we crave for is "This is Cool!" Coolness has become a major design goal for HCI professionals. If we are serious about building Cool into our products, we should also be serious about measuring it. With this in mind, we performed a scientific explication of the concept in order to capture the psychological essence of "coolness," covering a number of characteristics such as trendiness, uniqueness, rebelliousness, genuineness and utility. Based on the discourse in the literature, we arrived at a series of questionnaire measures, which we subjected to an exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 (N=315). The factor structure that emerged was tested through a confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 (N=835), in which American and Korean respondents rated their perceptions of a variety of old and new technologies. Converging evidence suggests that in order for an interface to be rated as cool, it should not only be attractive and original, but also help the user assert his/her uniqueness or subcultural identity. Study 3 (N=317) tested the content validity of our factors by comparing them with a holistic evaluation of coolness and arrived at a parsimonious three-factor solution for conceptualizing it in terms of originality, attractiveness and subcultural appeal. Together, these constitute tangible user criteria that designers can strategically address and researchers can systematically measure.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2013.09.008
DO - 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2013.09.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84887421234
SN - 1071-5819
VL - 72
SP - 169
EP - 180
JO - International Journal of Human Computer Studies
JF - International Journal of Human Computer Studies
IS - 2
ER -