Impressions at First Touch: Insights on how visually impaired persons form their first impressions of technology

Abstract

Human judgements are substantially influenced by first impressions. In previous studies, researchers contributing to people's first impressions of technical artifacts focused mainly on visual attributes. However, their findings do not apply to visually impaired people who cannot visually explore technology. Hence, we assume that visually impaired people rather rely on their haptic perception to get a first impression. To examine how visually impaired people form their first impressions of technological products, we conducted an explorative study with three visually impaired participants. We asked them to evaluate haptic features of mobile phones and speakers using the repertory grid (RepGrid) method. This method can be applied in research fields at an early stage when no findings are available yet. To empower the participants to autonomously rate items, we used a haptic scale. We complemented qualitative results of the RepGrid technique with observations on how long participants explore technology as well as a following interview on first impressions. We found eight constructs which can serve as a basis for a quantitative evaluation on how devices make a haptic first impression.