Augmented reality (AR) provides many possibilities for the tourism industry, for example, it is possible to use lifelike characters to recreate historical people in authentic settings. The current aim was to study visitors’ experienced sense of presence and user experience related to an AR presentation of a historical figure in the context of Headquarters Museum in Mikkeli, Finland. 30 visitors used a tablet-based animated augmented reality implementation, in which a lifelike figure of commander-in-chief of Finland C. G. Mannerheim was recreated in his workroom dating back to World War II. The results from a post-test questionnaire indicated that the lifelike AR character alone was able to evoke relatively high sense of presence, and the participants also rated their hedonic user experience as positive on different dimensions. The results support the use of the current approach to create desirable AR representations of real people in the tourism industry or other industries.

The aim of this research was to explore the role of Schwartz's ten universal human values in the context of using products and services. Seventy-five participants were asked to qualitatively describe a product or service especially well in line with their values and a product or service in conflict with their values, and to evaluate them on a number of rating scales. The scales included 30 statements (three statements per universal value) probing the presence of each value in user experiences related to products and services and 10 statements studying the perceived importance of each value. The results showed that all the ten universal values were relevant in the evaluations of products and services both in line with the users’ values and in conflict with the users’ values. In the current sample, hedonism and self-direction were rated as the values most frequently present and most important in the evaluations of products and services in line with values. Power was rated as a moderately important value for products in conflict with values, but significantly less important for products in line with values. Achievement values were frequently reported in the qualitative descriptions, but they were less prominent in the quantitative data. The results suggest that the model of ten universal values is promising in understanding the role of users’ value preferences in using products and services, and it seems to have potential for complementing the psychological needs approach in understanding user experience.

Psychological needs have become an important viewpoint in understanding user experience (UX), however there have been few attempts to operationalize the existing need theories for studying children's experiences. The aim of this research was to experiment with two methods, a laddering interview and a new quantitative theory-based questionnaire, in studying the fulfillment of ten basic psychological needs. A mixed-method approach consisting of these methods was tested in evaluating an interactive children's activity called Backpack Tours in an exhibition center with 18 children of 6-9 years of age. The laddering interviews made it possible to connect the designed elements of the activity to fulfillment of six psychological needs: pleasure-stimulation, relatedness, self-actualization-meaning, autonomy, physical thriving, and competence. The quantitative results showed significant variations in the children's evaluations of the fulfillment of the ten needs. The results of the evaluation are useful in understanding the strengths of various design solutions and as a basis for further development of the activity.

With advances in satellite and street-level imaging, photorealistic mobile maps have gained widespread popularity. The aim of this research was to study the user experience of mobile navigation with three different mobile maps: a traditional graphical map representation was compared to a photorealistic satellite map and a photorealistic street-level view. Nine subjects used all three visualizations in urban pedestrian navigation and gave evaluations of navigation support, user experience (AttrakDiff), task load (NASA TLX), and overall preference using questionnaire methods. The results indicated that the photorealistic maps were more stimulating to the user than the graphical map and the photorealistic street-level view also enabled more effective identification of nearby landmarks than the other map versions. However, the photorealistic maps were perceived as less pragmatic than the graphical map and the street-level view also demanded a higher task load. The graphical map was the most often preferred visualization.

The aim of this research was to study the structure of the most satisfying and unsatisfying user experiences in terms of experienced emotions, psychological needs, and contextual factors. 45 university students wrote descriptions of their most satisfying and unsatisfying recent user experiences and analyzed those experiences using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) method for experienced emotions, a questionnaire probing the salience of 10 psychological needs, and a self-made set of rating scales for analyzing context. The results suggested that it was possible to capture variations in user experiences in terms of experienced emotions, fulfillment of psychological needs, and context effectively by using psychometric rating scales. The results for emotional experiences showed significant differences in 16 out of 20 PANAS emotions between the most satisfying and unsatisfying experiences. The results for psychological needs indicated that feelings of autonomy and competence emerged as highly salient in the most satisfying experiences and missing in the unsatisfying experiences. High self-esteem was also notably salient in the most satisfying experiences. The qualitative results indicated that most of the participants’ free-form qualitative descriptions, especially for the most unsatisfying user experiences, gave important information about the pragmatic aspects of the interaction, but often omitted information about hedonic and social aspects of user experience.

To understand the technical feasibility and user perception of mobile video, we conducted a two-week trial where a student community used mobile phone and Web technologies to share the events of a campus festival. The questions we investigated included the capability of contemporary smart phones to capture and share the events via real time and stored video; the usage patterns that arise within mobile video community; and the social connections between shooters and viewers. Outcomes on the technical level indicate that challenges remain. The bandwidth of 3G cellular connections limits the quality of live videos and video transfer via public WLAN networks is unreliable causing lost connections. The best results today can be achieved by sending the captured videos from mobile phones to the server in the background and providing video-on-demand rather than live video service. The observed consumption patterns show that freshness of the videos is the least important selection factor while manual and automatic textual tagging is important. Seamless integration of video sharing to camera application would improve the user experience.

In this research, we addressed the problem of visualizing route histories on a mobile device. We developed a solution, which combines the visualization of three route history parameters: speed, direction, and location. The visualization was tested in a laboratory evaluation with 12 subjects. The results showed that by using the visualization the subjects were able to estimate actual driving speeds accurately. The subjects also evaluated that the visualization supported their knowledge of the speed, location, and direction quite well. The results suggest that the presented visualization is an improvement over currently used route history visualizations.

In this paper we present techniques for selecting one's current location in mobile location-based systems. We present Locawe (Location-aware System Platform) and four alternative location selection techniques, which are physical selection using RFID technology, automatic selection based on GPS coordinates, selection from a mobile map with a stylus, and a textual selection technique involving a virtual keyboard and a selection list. These techniques have been tested in real mobile applications.

The aim of this research was to explore the navigational effects of two common features in current mobile roadmap systems: automatic rotation based on the vehicle's direction of movement and speed-dependent automatic zooming. 12 subjects tried four different visualization techniques for a mobile map in real traffic: no rotation/constant zooming, no rotation/automatic zooming, automatic rotation/constant zooming, and automatic rotation/automatic zooming. The subjects rated the techniques on four scales: position knowledge support, direction knowledge support, identification of real-world objects based on map objects and an overall score. The results showed that conditions involving automatic rotation and/or zooming got systematically more positive ratings on all scales than the conditions without those features. The implementation of automatic zooming created for this experiment was rated as very close to optimal. These results suggest that both automatic rotation and automatic zooming can enhance navigation when implemented to a mobile roadmap.

The present aim was to develop methods that estimate emotional experiences in real time from the electromyographic activity of two facial muscles: zygomaticus major (activated when smiling) and corrugator supercilii (activated when frowning). Ten subjects were stimulated with a series of emotionally arousing pictures and videos. After each stimulus the subjects rated the valence of their emotional experience on a nine-point bipolar dimensional scale. At the same time the computer estimated the subjects’ ratings on the basis of their electrical facial activity during each stimulation with 70 computational models. The models estimated the subjects’ ratings either categorically or dimensionally with regression models. The best categorical models were able to estimate negative and positive ratings with an average accuracy of over 70 and 80% for pictures and videos, respectively. The best correlations between the human ratings and machine estimations formed with the regression models were high (r>0.9). These findings indicate that models estimating psycho-emotional experiences on the basis of facial activity can be created successfully in several ways.

The aim of this research was to develop methods for the automatic person-independent estimation of experienced emotions from facial expressions. Ten subjects watched series of emotionally arousing pictures and videos, while the electromyographic (EMG) activity of two facial muscles: zygomaticus major (activated in smiling) and corrugator supercilii (activated in frowning) was registered. Based on the changes in the activity of these two facial muscles, it was possible to distinguish between ratings of positive and negative emotional experiences at a rate of almost 70% for pictures and over 80% for videos. Using these methods, the computer could adapt its behavior according to the user's emotions during human-computer interaction.

The present study investigated the psychophysiological effects of positive and negative affective interventions in human–computer interaction during and after the interventions. Eighteen subjects were exposed to pre-programmed mouse delays in an interactive problem-solving task. Following the mouse delays three types of conditions were used: positive or negative interventions given via speech synthesizer, and no intervention. Facial electromyographic responses were recorded from the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscle sites. These muscles control smiling and frowning, respectively. Smiling activity was significantly higher during the positive than the other conditions. It was also significantly higher after the positive interventions than the no intervention condition. The frowning activity attenuated significantly more after the positive interventions than the no intervention condition. Following the positive interventions the users' problem solving performance was significantly better than after no intervention. In all, the results suggest that both types of affective intervention had beneficial effects over ignoring the user. The results suggest further that positive intervention may be especially useful.

This paper investigated in two experiments pupillary responses to emotionally provocative sound stimuli. In experiment one, 30 subjects' pupillary responses were measured while listening to 10 negatively and 10 positively arousing sounds, and 10 emotionally neutral sounds. In addition, the subjects rated their subjective experiences to these stimuli. The results showed that the pupil size was significantly larger after highly arousing positive and negative stimuli than after neutral stimuli with medium arousal.