Abstract:
This study explores the impact of demographic characteristics including age, gender and culture on affective user centered design of mobile applications. Emotion-based design seeks to elicit a particular emotion so as to improve user satisfaction, interaction, and commitment. However, in the current literature, these demographic attributes are still investigated singly, and there is comparatively little knowledge on the ways in which these factors may interact to impact the emotion engagement in app design. The research proposed here will fill this gap by exploring the manner in which demographic factors influence emotional reactions toward specific design features such as color, spatial organization, fonts, and controls. The research goals are twofold, namely, to understand specific patterns of design preferences depending on the demographic characteristics of users and to assess overall levels of emotional engagement among the sample; finally, given the identified patterns of design preferences and levels of engagement, to formulate references for designing affective apps for users of different demographic backgrounds. This study applies a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods for data collection. The participant selection seeks diversity among users of different age groups starting from young adults up to older users together with participants from diverse genders and cultural backgrounds for broad applicability in the research results. The collection of qualitative data will occur through thorough interviews that enable participants to share their emotional reactions to mobile app interface features. The surveys implemented to study user satisfaction and interface emotional connection will generate quantitative measurements for this research. The project will produce specific recommendations for middle-aged user interface design and enhance the development of interactive user interfaces suitable for different audience demographics.
