Ambient UX Research: User Experience Investigation Through Multimodal Quadrangulation

Cyber-physical systems refer to environments that are sensitive and responsive to people, where users’ activities in a physical environment are enhanced by digitized services, thus calling for an Ambient UX design approach. Designing for experiences in such complex systems implies facing UX investigation in a holistic manner. The present work encompasses an initial overview of the methods employed to investigate systematically different facets of UX by actively involving users and based on experiments involving biometrics monitoring and other solutions to collect data. Investigation approaches are conceived as belonging to four layers of analysis, namely (i) physiological, (ii) behavioural, (iii) self-reported, and (iv) expert evaluation. The major contribution of the current research lies in the methodological integration firstly adopting a theoretical stance for UX investigation through multimodal quadrangulation, and secondly in a discussion on the applications of the approach as performed in a multidisciplinary research laboratory.