The Level of Harmony: A Validation Strategy for Brand & User Experience

Abstract

To stay competitive, users' needs have to be continuously addressed and holistically contemplated. Likewise, in order to create a harmonic user and brand experience, also brands' own values have to be regarded carefully. In this work, we present a first version (work-in progress) of an evaluation strategy aimed at assessing how to validate the level of harmony between brand and user experience at the touch-point of a user interface. The goal is to support design agencies to iteratively create and justify the designs to their clients. Our hypothesis is that human values can be taken as representations of universal psychological human needs, which companies want to constitute to reach a certain audience. The assumptions is, that from the level certain psychological needs are fulfilled by using a product, it can be deriving whether or not brand values could be translated into a product by design. Initial results confirm our hypothesis and reveal insights about matches and mismatches between UX and BX.

Full text

Veröffentlicht durch die Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V. 2017 in
M. Burghardt, R. Wimmer, C. Wolff, C. Womser-Hacker (Hrsg.):
Mensch und Computer 2017 – Tagungsband, 10.–13. September 2017, Regensburg.
Copyright (C) 2017 bei den Autoren. https://doi.org/10.18420/muc2017-mci-0317
Platzhalter für DOI und ggf. Copyright Text. (Bitte nicht entfernen).
Name, Vorname (2017): Titel. Mensch und Computer 2017 – Tagungsband. Gesellschaft
für Informatik. / Workshopband. Gesellschaft für Informatik. / Usability Professionals.
German UPA. DOI: xxxxxx
The Level of Harmony: A Validation
Strategy for Brand & User Experience
Anna-Katharina Frison1,2, Pamela Zotz3, Andreas Riener1,2
Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI), Ingolstadt, Germany1
Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria2
COBE GmbH, Munich, Germany3
Abstract
To stay competitive, users’ needs have to be continuously addressed and holistically contemplated.
Likewise, in order to create a harmonic user and brand experience, also brands’ own values have to be
regarded carefully. In this work, we present a first version (work-in progress) of an evaluation strategy
aimed at assessing how to validate the level of harmony between brand and user experience at the touch-
point of a user interface. The goal is to support design agencies to iteratively create and justify the designs
to their clients. Our hypothesis is that human values can be taken as representations of universal
psychological human needs, which companies want to constitute to reach a certain audience. The
assumptions is, that from the level certain psychological needs are fulfilled by using a product, it can be
deriving whether or not brand values could be translated into a product by design. Initial results confirm
our hypothesis and reveal insights about matches and mismatches between UX and BX.
1!Introduction
The impact of good user experience (UX) on brand perception and prestige cannot be
disclaimed, think for instance on the hype of Apple products (Meschtscherjakov et al., 2014).
For companies, besides UX also brand (BX) and customer experience (CX) are becoming
critical issues to stay competitive in the market. Users can experience brand values in each
single touch-point, e.g., while using a product, talking to service staff or looking at an ad in a
metro station. While designing for meaningful experiences, it becomes necessary to design for
the brand values, a brand wants to communicate and represent (Roto et al., 2016; Roto et al.,
2015). In particular, design agencies argue that their clients’ needs have to be addressed by
visualizing the individual brand identity. Furthermore, they have to design experiences which
fulfill users’ needs and values. Together with a medium-sized design agency, we developed
and preliminary evaluated a validation strategy to ensure that BX and UX are aligned. In this
paper, we focus on the touch-point of a user interface, nevertheless keeping the holistic
construct of a multi-touchpoint experience in mind, including as well non-salient aspects.
Veröffentlicht durch die Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V. 2017 in
M. Burghardt, R. Wimmer, C. Wolff, C. Womser-Hacker (Hrsg.):
Mensch und Computer 2017 – Tagungsband, 10.–13. September 2017, Regensburg.
Copyright (C) 2017 bei den Autoren. https://doi.org/10.18420/muc2017-mci-0317
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406 Frison, A. et al.
2 Anna-Katharina Frison1,2, Pamela Zotz3, Andreas Riener1,2
2!Related Work
The importance of integrating the brand construct in the HCI discipline was already mentioned
in (Roto & Rautava, 2008). They have investigated how the brand promise of Nokia can be
supported by self-defined experience goals, including generic elements of UX like utility,
usability for the pragmatic quality, stimulation and identification for the hedonic quality. To
define experience goals for a harmonized BX and UX in all touch points, (Roto et al., 2015)
presented a work-in-progress state of a strategy about enabling consistent experiences for a
Finnish company. In a workshop, they analyzed the alignment of the defined experience goals
and existing products with company representatives. Later, (Roto et al., 2016) summarized the
strategy of multi-touch-point experience design derived from brand identities and brand
values. (Clatworthy, 2012) describes a process and its evaluation, of how a brand strategy can
be transformed into service experiences. The evaluation was conducted by internal members
of the company, however the possibility to include costumers into the process for formative
iterations or user-testing was mentioned. Nevertheless, regarding needs, values and interests
that motivate a consumer towards buying an object are essential for companies. Surprisingly,
explicit methods to evaluate the level of harmony of brand and user experience are still rare.
3!A Validation Strategy
In the theory of UX, hedonic quality means the level of fulfillment of users’ individual needs
and values (Hassenzahl, 2005). Especially the subcomponent hedonic quality of identification
is essential for choosing a certain product or a brand, in general. Humans always want to
represent and communicate themselves, what is reflected by special affective experiences.
Hence the hedonic quality is dependent on how much users can identify themselves with a
product by need and value fulfillment (Hassenzahl et al., 2015). While brands create their own
brand values to reach a certain audience, we assume that brand and user experience can be
validated as harmonized in case the defined brand values fit to users’ personal values. Based
on this assumption, we are presenting our idea of creating a “need footprint” (3.1) and using
this construct for the validation of brand and user experience (3.2). For that, we setup a first
case study using an actual project (mobile banking app) provided by a design agency. Together
with their client, the agency has defined the core brand values that were supposed to be applied
to the UX of the use case: ambition, sovereignty, clarity, empathy. We want to validate, if those
are experienced by users. Results of the evaluation can be used for further design iterations.
3.1!Creating a Need Footprint
Values are a cognitive representation of human psychological needs which are formed by the
environment and social norms to be able to fulfill those (Rounds & Armstrong, 2005), e.g., the
value love is based on the need of sex. According to this theory, each value should be
representable by a need footprint, showing to which extent universal psychological needs are
represented by a brand value. We rely on (Hassenzahl et al., 2010) and use their selection of
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The Level of Harmony: A Validation Strategy for Brand & User Experience 3
universal psychological needs of (Sheldon et al., 2001), adjusted to the context of UX
(competence, relatedness, popularity, stimulation, meaning, security, and autonomy). Within
a first survey to prove our hypothesis, we asked a small sample size (N = 7) to assess to which
extent each brand value is represented by the 7 universal psychological needs. The brand value
empathy differs visually from the other values. Applying a MANOVA using Pillai’s trace
shows significant effects between the extent a psychological need is fulfilled and a certain
value, V = 1.399, F(21,60) = 2.498, p < .05. Separate univariate ANOVAs on the outcome
variables show significant effects on the needs competence (F(3,24)= 10.230, p <.001) and
relatedness (F(3,24)= 21.624, p <.001) as well. Tukey-HSD post-hoc tests reveal that the value
empathy differs significantly from the values ambition, clarity and sovereignty concerning the
need of competence and relatedness. Consequently, a value can be assigned to certain needs,
what is the basis for creating a need footprint.
Fig. 1: Validation results show that a correlation towards a harmonized brand and user experience can be assumed
on certain values
3.2!Validation by Using the Need Footprint
Next, to validate if BX and UX are indeed harmonized, we wanted to know how much users’
needs are fulfilled at the touch-point using the mobile banking app. Therefore, we are utilizing
the need scale from (Sheldon et al., 2001). The app was presented to 23 subjects (av. age=22.3)
as video, showing the UX design (visual designs, functionality, usability, transitions, etc.).
Based on the collected data, we can analyze if the degree of users’ need fulfillment is in
accordance with the extent brand values are represented by the universal needs. Fig. 1 shows
the results of the survey based on the need footprint. Applying a MANOVA comparing the
extent psychological needs are fulfilled by the app and the extent values are represented by
needs, we can observe significant effects by using Pillai’s trace, V= 1.020, F(28,46) = 5.67, p
<.05. The need fulfillment by the app differs from the extent, needs are represented by brand
values. As we are only interested in the difference between the app and the different values,
non-significances of Post-hoc would show a harmonized brand and user experience. However,
looking at Tukey-HSD post-hoc test, we can report significances between the value ambition
and the need fulfillment while using the app. The need of competence is not as fulfilled by the
app as it should, as well as the needs of meaning, stimulation, and popularity. Moreover, the
need of relatedness is not achieved as expected by the brand value of empathy. Contrarily, the
need of security looks harmonic according to ambition, clarity, and sovereignty.
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4!Conclusion & Future Work
In this work, we have shown the preliminary evaluation of our validation strategy on the case
study of a banking app. To summarize, we found accordance between the values clarity and
sovereignty and the actual need fulfillment. Regarding the individual needs, we can see that
security is fulfilled by the app experience, and represented by the brand values in the same
extent. So we can conclude that our initial results already reveal interesting insights about the
harmony of brand and user experience. Although there is no overall accordance, and we only
tested our concept with a small sample size, we identified correlations between fulfilled
psychological needs and brand values. The footprint (Fig. 1) shows where further iterations
are necessary to achieve a full range harmony. In future work, our approach needs to be
validated with more subjects and controversial project examples. To be more holistic, subjects
should interact in the real context, and different touch-points have to be considered.
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