3. What is
COMFORT ?
“Comfort” is quite a subjective thing. It has different meaning to different people. Though comfort is a universal
phenomenon, people experience and feel it differently.
To study the notion of comfort, I conducted an interview.
Basic Infomation:
The interview is held in Jan.26, 2014 in my room. I interviewed four subjects in total. My familiarity with people I
already know will influence my interpretation of what they have to say. So I chose four people I don’t know. They
were all friends of my friend.
The interview is a face to face interview. It is semi-structured. I used my phone to record the video. At the same
time, I took some notes.
Questions:
I asked two open-ended questions:
1. Please describe a recent incident make you feel comfortable.
2. How do you define comfort?
Except the open questions I asked, I asked some of them about what make a comfortable physical environment.
Because I want to get some potential design implication for future technology.
.
I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang
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4. What is the
Result
Subject
Subject #1
Male, 21,
Student
of the interview?
Definition of Comfort
Completely be myself, not worry about
hurting other’s feeling, making others
angry.
Subject #2 Warmth. Happiness, hard questions.
Female, 23, Happiness. Feel at ease. Ex, my favorStudent
ite place is the place I work. It’s a horse
barn. I worked with horse everyday.
They are places that I feel like home.
Subject #3 Be in a Place that I feel at ease. Ex, being
Male, 21,
at my bedroom is comfortable. Home
Student
in indy where I grow up is a comfortable place. In physical meaning, it’s like
couches, light noise, etc. Maybe I want a
house hold AI does whatever I want to
do, like cooking and washing clothes.
Subject #4 Comfort for me means low stress level,
Female, 23, no drama. Like being in my house is very
Employee low stress. I’m a shy person. I don’t like
go out often.
Most Recent Comfortable Experience
It is Christmas, we got together in my grandma’s
house. They had lot of decoration. I had a good time
with my family. I can totally be myself. I don’t have to
be worried that I would make somebody angry. Because I’m surrounded with people I know.
It’s my birthday. I choose to be at home, be very lazy,
eat lots of food and pet my cat.
I like good food, good accompany, good people
around. As like I visit Bloomington, I spend time with
my family, and friends.
A comfortable environment for me is like soft noise,
nice place to sit, being warm and comfortable lighting.
Come down here to see my friend Kendra. We get
along well with each other. We know each other well
and every time I’m around her. It’s nice!
I’m comfortable with my work. It is a chill job. I work at
a bagel shop. It’s a small store. Everybody work there
are very close, it’s like a family.
I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang
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5. What do we
Learn
from research?
When I asked questions about comfort, people always link
comfort with certain emotional responses. They feel comfortable when they’re spending time with people they love, like
families and friends. For example, one subject mentioned he
feels comfortable when he is around his friends and family. Because he can completely be himself and doesn’t worry about
other’s feelings.
Except the open questions I asked, I asked some of them about
what makes a comfortable physical environment. Because I
want to get some potential design implication for future technology. Most answers mentioned warmth. Maybe because it’s a
cold day and people all want to stay warm place.
ACCOMPANIED
RELAXED
ENVIRONMENT
LOW STRESS
So I can conclude that people feel comfortable when they’re accompanied, with low stress, stay in a
comfortable place (like “light-noise, good sitting, and warm place”).
I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang
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6. What would the
Design Guidance
be?
From the analysis of the interview, we know people feel comfortable when they are not stressed and stay in a relaxed environment and accompanied by people they know.
According to the Maslows’ hierarchy of need, comfort to them belongs to physiological, safety and belonging
needs, which can be met by improving the exterior factors.
When it applies to the Internet of things, my interpretation of “Low stress“ is that new technology should be easy
to learn, easy to use and with less mistakes. First, we should avoid overwhelming infomation and simplify the mobile part. For example, if we design a home monitor, we cannot use different applications to take charge of different sensors. For instance, thermostat has one app, light has one app, wifi has one app...so many apps. The user
would be overwhelmed. It’s necessary to combine some functions of related sensors into one app. Second, the robustness of the system is very important, which means the system should be stable. When we design this system,
we should consider all the possible user cases to avoid potential user mistakes. In a word, if the system is buggy
and has overwhelming infomation, user would be stressed and unable to feel comfortable.
When it comes to “relaxed environment”, I think the system should be in conformance with users’ habit. That is
to say, we should balance usability and functionality of new product.
We can also do something related to “accompanied“ in the Internet of things. More social networks can be added
to the design of system.
I 543 Interaction Design Method | The Meanning of Comfort | Interview | Melissa Tang
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