Skeuomorphism and flat design: Evaluating users’ emotion experience in car navigation interface design

Abstract

To study the difference of users’ emotion experience between skeuomorphism and flat design, based on kansei engineering, cognitive psychology and human factors theory, we conducted a semantic differential (SD) experimental study in car navigation interface. The independent variables in this study was the visual representation method (VRM). The dependent variable were user experience rating (UER) and artificial texture rating (ATR). The main findings of this study are as follows: (1) we find that the users’ emotion experience is mainly made up of stylization cognition factor (SCF), emotional cognitive factor (ECF) and the decorative cognitive factor (DCC); (2) The artificial texture rating (ATR) has a significant effect on user experience rating (UER). The research results can help designers to deeply understand the difference of user emotional impact between skeuomorphism and flat design, which could guide the designers better to design the car navigation interface.