Visualize Your Spatial Experience (VYSE): A Method and a Case Study in an Exhibition Center Petri Saarinen, Timo Partala, Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila Tampere University of Technology Human-Centered Technology P.O.Box 589 FI-33101 Tampere, Finland firstname.lastname@tut.fi ABSTRACT When designing ubiquitous technology applications for an existing physical environment using a user-centered design process, an important challenge is to understand how the target space is experienced by its users. In this paper, we propose Visualize Your Spatial Experience (VYSE), a method for studying spatial experiences. VYSE leans on visual methods such as coloring and drawing on a map by the users of the space. In addition, interviews are used to elicit details of the user experiences. VYSE was tested in a study of spatial and navigation experiences of exhibition center visitors (N = 14). With the method, it was possible to capture variations in the visitors’ experiences systematically in relation to the different locations of the target environment. The results showed that exhibits and physical properties of the space were the two most prominent factors affecting the exhibition experiences. Author Keywords Spatial experience; navigation; exhibition; design ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User interfaces – User-centered design. General Terms Human Factors; Design. INTRODUCTION Increasingly, ubiquitous computing applications have been developed for environments such as homes, workplaces, and different environments for the general public such as visitor centers and exhibitions [8, 10, 19]. In many cases, ubiquitous applications are developed specifically for these kinds of environments and they form an integral part of the environment. Current methods used in the different phases of the standard user-centered design process do not fully accommodate for the new demands created by ubiquitous computing. The user experience of ubiquitous technology tailored for a specific environment cannot be fully designed or studied without understanding the effects of the physical context for which the system is designed. There is a need for new methods, which give developers and researchers tools for systematically understanding the effects of context in different stages of the design process. The need for developing a new method arose in the Smart Space for Personal Guidance (SPAGU) research project, whose purpose is to integrate new kind of navigation and guidance technology to a large exhibition center with five different exhibitions. The project was lacking a deeper understanding of the exhibition visitors and their spatial experiences related to the target environment including the needs related to navigation and guidance. In order to gather the information needed at this stage, many options were considered. Observational methods such as the contextual inquiry [2] are useful methods, but especially in the context of a large space, these methods are very time-consuming. Using interview and survey methods [e.g. 16], it is difficult to link the visitors’ experiences to the exact locations and objects, to which they are related. Finally, there are cognitive methods for reconstructing the users’ mental models of the environment [14, 21], but they do not typically focus on the participants’ spatial experiences. Consequently, a new method was developed, which would better answer to the needs of the current project. The aim of the new method was twofold. On one hand, the aim was to develop a method, which would help the exhibition organizers to understand, which parts of their exhibitions the visitors visit and what their experiences in different areas are like. On the other hand, we aimed at developing a method, which could be used successfully as part of the user-centered design process for ubiquitous technology and even as a research method, thus also benefitting a larger audience beyond the scope of the current project. For both usage types there was a common goal: By using visual methods and engaging activities, we tried to make the method itself stimulating and fun for the participants in order to gain richer and more accurate results. When the method was ready, a user study with 14 participants was conducted to test the feasibility of the method. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full cit ation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. NordiCHI '12, October 14-17, 2012 Copenhagen, Denmark Copyright © 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1482-4/12/10... $15.00” 486