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Designing consumer interfaces for experiential tasks: an empirical investigation

Published: 01 September 2005 Publication History

Abstract

In the early adoption phase of business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce, the tasks that proved most conducive to online consumer interaction typically were goal-directed, being clear in sequence and structure. A key challenge in ecommerce is the ability to design interfaces that support experiential tasks in addition to goal-directed tasks. Most of the ecommerce research on interface design, however, has focused on goal-directed tasks and has not addressed experiential tasks. Based on the literature from interface metaphors and mental models, this paper explores the use of tangible attributes derived from the physical business domain as a technique for designing an interface that effectively supports experiential tasks. A laboratory experiment was designed and conducted to test the impact of two types of interfaces and business domain familiarity when completing an experiential task. Because consumers need to retain and recall information to evaluate products/services or to make brand associations, retention/recall of information was measured on both the day of the treatment and after a 2-day lag. Results revealed that the interface based upon the business domain metaphor stimulated higher levels of retention and recall of information and thus provided the desired support for experiential tasks. Further, users with weaker domain familiarity showed the greatest improvement in retention and recall, particularly after a 2-day lag, when using the interface with the business domain metaphor design.

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Published In

cover image European Journal of Information Systems
European Journal of Information Systems  Volume 14, Issue 3
September 2005
111 pages

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Macmillan Press Ltd.

United Kingdom

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2005

Author Tags

  1. consumer behavior
  2. domain familiarity
  3. electronic commerce
  4. experiential tasks
  5. human-computer interaction
  6. information presentation
  7. interface design
  8. mental models
  9. metaphor

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  • (2022)Low-Level Activity Patterns as Indicators of User Familiarity with WebsitesProceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3503252.3531300(153-163)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2022
  • (2021)Facilitating Remote Design Thinking Workshops in Healthcare: the Case of Contouring in Radiation OncologyExtended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411763.3443445(1-5)Online publication date: 8-May-2021
  • (2017)How is your user feeling? inferring emotion through human-computer interaction devicesMIS Quarterly10.25300/MISQ/2017/41.1.0141:1(1-21)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2017
  • (2015)Mobile application usabilityMIS Quarterly10.25300/MISQ/2015/39.2.0839:2(435-472)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2015
  • (2010)The intangibility of e-servicesACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/1795377.179538441:2(110-131)Online publication date: 12-May-2010
  • (2009)The role of perceived user-interface design in continued usage intention of self-paced e-learning toolsComputers & Education10.1016/j.compedu.2009.01.01453:2(216-227)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2009

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