Characterising the experience of interaction: an evaluation of automotive rotary dials

Optimising sensory product qualities is a priority for automotive manufacturers when developing human-machine interfaces, as user experience frameworks consider sensory aesthetics to be a main influencing factor of the overall judgement of product appeal. This empirical study examines whether users' overall judgements of product appeal can be predicted from measures of non-visual aesthetic qualities. Ninety-one UK owners of Supermini segment cars assessed five examples of rotary temperature dials. Factor analysis gave four clear factors common across all samples, of which 'unrefined loudness' and 'positivity/precision' predicted up to 26% variance in the hedonic score; both factors were similarly important in the regression models. Significant differences in appeal were observed between the samples; however, there were no effects due to age or gender. Practitioner Summary: The research shows that the overall appeal of automotive rotary dials is partially predicted by their non-visual aesthetics. These findings are applicable to the design of any products where improving the user experience is a goal, as it demonstrates that user experience models are applicable to product domains other than computing and information technology.