Discussion

The goal of this experimentation was to validate or refute the findings assumed in chapter five by removing the elements of the experimentation that can be considered as too strong, risking the participants to only answer to visual supports and game rules and not really consider the volume of each objects.

With the limited amount of participants (21), results can not be accepted as entirely representative of participants behavior, but the findings can be considered as a strong indication of the sort of behaviors to be observed when participants are facing objects of various geometries.

Figure 4.4. Color graduations represents the data shown in table 7.1, minimum data being 1 and maximum data 15 (numbers of participants to position their body in that area), dashed line representing participants standing point.

The shared goal of both chapter four and five was to test if the creation of blind spot would motivate participants to move around and if object with visibly deformed geometries would invite participants to move (toward opened areas above and around the object).

For the first element, this first experimentation can only indicate that when first forced to not move, the reflex from participants would be to move around and see the hidden faces of the objects. It can not really be considered as a blind spot and more as a constraint.

So it could be considered that if participants were to be constrained and then released of said constraint, their first potential action would be to perform the action that they could not perform under constraints. This assumption originate from observing that unanimously, once the participants were able to move for the second section, they all directly went to see the opposite side of the four objects.They could have performed different actions such as stepping backward or move even closer to the table, crouch or stand on a chair to get a higher vantage point. There are a few numbers of potential actions they could have performed, but all 21 participants chose to walk around the table and stand opposite to where they were in section one.

To prevent some potential error in the analysis process of this test, a statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run to try and define if the parameters of the test (variation in geometry of the interfaces) could be considered to be significant or not.

This analysis was set up to verify any potential effect of the different interface’s geometry on participants’ answers. The possibilities were either the interface has some effect, or participants results are similar and the types of interfaces doesn’t have a noticeable impact on their answers.

A two way analysis was achieved, participant’s answers entered as results, each participants entered as factor #1 and the different tasked completed (each displays) as factor #2.

The relevant p value to look for here is the factor #2 value, indicating if the changes in display could be considered as the reason for participants varying answers.

Results showing a variance of p=0.000 (rounded to p=0.001, considered similar) tends to show that the factors in question are statistically valid, the threshold value being p=0.05. Any value superior to 0.05 would indicate that regardless of the change of display, participant’s answer would be similar.

The analysis results, see table 4.2, tend to show that during the test the parameters of factor #2 (object geometry variation) were sufficient enough, with a variance of p=0.001.

This can indicate that the change in display geometry do have an impact on participants’

behaviors.

Regarding the geometry of the object guiding where participants would move their upper body, several key elements are observable:

Changing the size of the object might have an effect on participants behavior.

Object with clear dynamism (short and tall side visually different) and large or curious opened area seems to have a influence on participants behavior. Related to that, object with discreet shapes seems to be not as striking and participants might not share any interest in following the shape of the object (from tall side to short side)

In graphic design, this principle of using strong visual cues to guide viewer eyes around can be coined as “perceptual salience”, and as such “Cartographers employ a set of visual variables (e.g., size, color hue, color value, orientation, etc.)”…, to guide viewers toward relevant element of

Table 4.2. Analysis of variance for the first test.

knowledge [81]. This hierarchization of visual cues to indicate a context or guide the viewer can affect viewing behavior and response time [81].

This capacity to guide novice or expert to focus on pre-determined elements of information via graphically emphasizing an element of information could be applicable to the design of objects.

This can correspond to the tendencies from this chapter’s participants to be guided toward strong features of an object while mild looking object could be considered as less interesting, or less salient.

This value of saliency could also have an effect on the perception of an object and will be discussed in chapter five and six via the use of visual support.

With or without the visual support and game rules from chapter five, results tends to show that participants would be influenced by the geometry of an object, as long as there’s a strong visual indication of a direction where to look into.

The behavior observed during the experiment process as well as the result point toward confirming the previously stated proposition:

H1) The volume (dimensions) and geometry of an object (interface) has an impact on the participant behavior (movement around the object).

As stated previously this experimentation is a continuation of chapter five, but was organized after the completion of chapter six. The design of this experiment has been curated to account for what has been discovered in chapter six, visual support having a strong influence on participants behaviors. The result also stated that participants could project some level of abstraction on objects (see chapter six section 6.6).


Chapter 5

Interface’s geometry with visual support and its effect on viewer’s behavior

This chapter presents the second experimental test of this study and its following results and analysis. The first section describes the research hypothesis and preliminary work done on building the objects that will be used for the experimental process. The second section introduces this experimentation aim, objectives and general proceeding. The third section describes the component of the experiment as well as the pool of participants and the set of tasks they were asked to perform. Section four explains in detail how the experiment was conducted, performed and recorded. Section five presents the experiment results and its analysis. Finally section six proposes a discussion on the proceeding of the experiment, its results and possible evolutions and or additional implementation that could form a second type of experimental tests (presented in chapter four).