Coolness
Coolness is used every day from people to describe stuff, people and activities. But what is coolness? How do we decide so quickly if something is cool? When a product stops being cool and it becomes boring and obsolete?
In order to answer such questions we started collecting literature on the subject. We realised that within Human Computer Interaction, the research area where we work, studies appeared that investigated what coolness is. In order to contribute, we conducted a thorough literature review and we found out that coolness is divided to inner and outer cool. Inner cool is related to the personality characteristics that we perceive from a person or product. For example, we may believe that Michael Jordan was cool because he made everything look so easy, or that AllStar Shoes are cool because they are rebellious. Outer cool is related to the style of a person/product, its appearance, and how much we believe it matches ours. The basic idea behind our research is that through the way we perceive the appearance of a product (outer cool) we assign personality characteristics to it (inner cool) and then they both influence our overall perception of the product's coolness.
In order to answer such questions we started collecting literature on the subject. We realised that within Human Computer Interaction, the research area where we work, studies appeared that investigated what coolness is. In order to contribute, we conducted a thorough literature review and we found out that coolness is divided to inner and outer cool. Inner cool is related to the personality characteristics that we perceive from a person or product. For example, we may believe that Michael Jordan was cool because he made everything look so easy, or that AllStar Shoes are cool because they are rebellious. Outer cool is related to the style of a person/product, its appearance, and how much we believe it matches ours. The basic idea behind our research is that through the way we perceive the appearance of a product (outer cool) we assign personality characteristics to it (inner cool) and then they both influence our overall perception of the product's coolness.
Initially we focused on Inner coolness. The outcome of our work was the Inner COOL questionnaire, a tool that measures the perceived inner coolness of a product through 16 items, which are assigned to three inner cool qualities: usability (how much we believe the product makes our lives easier), desirability (how much we believe it matches with us) and rebelliousness (how much the product differs from its competition).
The second part of our research extended our previous work on Inner coolness to include Outer coolness too, with the aim to produce a unified COOL questionnaire. Through an analytical process that also included established User Experience questionnaires, we identified that outer cool is comprised from hedonic quality (deals how we identify with a product and how stimulated we feel when we interact with it), and from classic aesthetics (how clean, clear and symmetrical is perceived the physical form of a product). The outcome of our work is the COOL questionnaire a tool comprised from 18 items that measure the five mentioned qualities and three control items for overall coolness.
The second part of our research extended our previous work on Inner coolness to include Outer coolness too, with the aim to produce a unified COOL questionnaire. Through an analytical process that also included established User Experience questionnaires, we identified that outer cool is comprised from hedonic quality (deals how we identify with a product and how stimulated we feel when we interact with it), and from classic aesthetics (how clean, clear and symmetrical is perceived the physical form of a product). The outcome of our work is the COOL questionnaire a tool comprised from 18 items that measure the five mentioned qualities and three control items for overall coolness.
The COOL Questionnaire
Our research publications on Coolness
Raptis, D., Kjeldskov, J., and Skov, M.B. (2013) Understanding "Cool" in Human-Computer Interaction Research and Design. In Proc. OzCHI 2013, 53-62.
Raptis, D. (2015) User Experience of Mobile Devices: Physical Form, Usability and Coolness, PhD Thesis, Aalborg University.
Bruun, A., Raptis, D., Kjeldskov, J., and Skov, M.B. (2016) Measuring the coolness of interactive products: The COOL Questionnaire. Behaviour & Information
Technology, 35 (3), 233-249.
Technology, 35 (3), 233-249.
Raptis, D., Bruun, A., Kjeldskov, J., and Skov, M.B. (2016) Converging coolness and investigating its relation to user experience. Behaviour & Information
Technology, 1-18.
Technology, 1-18.