Touch OK to continue: Error messages and affective response on interactive public displays

Abstract

This paper contributes to the important, if somewhat overlooked, topic of error message handling on interactive public displays. As the complexity of public display services increase, error situations are likely to increase correspondingly. This study is a first step in attempting to discover and understand the effect different types of error messages have on the user's affective response while using a public display application. A total of 12 error messages that varied in tone, severity, and mode (3×2×2 factorial design) were designed, and data was gathered in a field trial with 84 participants. Results show that using friendly or neutral tones, and providing users with an active role, has ..