A Study on Effectiveness of Onomatopoeia in Expressing Users' Operational Feelings about HMIs

Abstract

Several studies have focused on the usability of human–machine interfaces (HMIs). To date it remains a challenge to interpret the emotions of users operating them, because many factors that may affect emotion are related to each other. In this paper, we use onomatopoeia to grasp the emotion of HMI users. Japanese has a large number of onomatopoeic words to express sensory experiences. We investigated sound symbolic associations between phonemes of Japanese onomatopoeia and operational feelings of users. We conducted a psychological experiment where respondents used onomatopoeia to express feelings when they used HMIs and evaluated their impressions (comfort/discomfort) regarding use of devices. Results show a certain relationship between the phonemes of the onomatopoeia and the operational feelings. Onomatopoeia is an effective way of quantifying users' operational feelings about HMIs.