Visualizing Situations: Comparing Comprehension and Emotion between Simple and Detailed Dining Situation Sketches

Abstract

Situation is considered as an important factor in psychological re-search, and the principle of situation research is still being established in recent years. It is important to take situations into consideration in design psychology, affective engineering and Kansei study as well. However, there are few tools and measurement methods to categorize, present or assess situations. Various researches that applied visualized situations can be found, but the design simplicity of the images (visualized situations) was not discussed or treated as a factor. In this paper, we proposed a way of using visualized situations to evaluate participants’ (48) comprehension and emotion in different dining situations. The design simplicity of the visualized situations and gender are considered as two main factors. Two-way ANOVA and independent t-test yielded significant differences in both comprehension and evoked emotions. Both design simplicity and gender indicated significant main effects and interactions in specific items of the measurement. The results suggest that how simple the visualized situations are could influence the understanding and feeling on the situations. Gender should also be taken into consideration. Based on the results, we intend to improve and achieve a better design of visualized situation tool for psychological, design and Kansei research in future study.