Search results

Inspired by the dynamic changes in our daily lives enabled via quantified-self technologies and the urgent need for more studies on the human-computer interaction design mechanisms adopted by these applications, this study explores the value of user affective experience mirroring and examines the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification in a psychological self-help system (PSS) that aids people in work stress relief.

Based on an analysis of the existing systems and theories in relevant fields, we conducted mixed-method research, involving semi-structured interviews, experience sampling experiments and user bio data triangulations, to identify the benefits of user affective experience mirroring and examine the impact of visual impact metaphor–based (VIM) meaningful gamification on PSS users.

For a gamified PSS, users generally perceive VIM as arousing more feelings of enjoyment, empathy, trust and usefulness, empowering them to gain more mastery and control over their emotional well-beings, especially with relieving their occupational stress and upbringing their level of perceived happiness. Overtime, VIM-based meaningful gamification further boosts such value of a PSS.

Weaving together meaningful gamification and psychological empowerment theories, the results emphasized that successful empowerment of user through gamification in PSSs relies heavily on whether a deeper and meaningful affective connection can be established with the users, in short, “meaningful gamification for psychological empowerment”. Such an understanding, as demonstrated in our research framework, also sheds light on the design theories for persuasive technology and human influence tactics during human computer interactions.

The results of the study demonstrate to practitioners how to make the best use of gamification strategies to deeply relate to and resonate with users. Even without complicated game-play design, meaningful gamification mechanisms, such as VIM facilitate the empowerment of users while gaining their appreciation, establishing a deeper connection with them and eventually generating persuasive effects on intended future behavioural outcomes.

The effective management of work-related stress with handy tools such as a VIM-based PSS can be beneficial for many organizations and, to a large extent, the society.

This study proposed and empirically demonstrated the empowerment effect of meaningful gamification for PSS users. In this cross-disciplinary study, theories from different research domains were synthesized to develop a more thorough and multi-faceted understanding of the optimal design strategies for emerging information systems like this VIM-based PSS.

This paper aims to explore the virtual experience to understand its components and its effects on consumers’ real world.

Our approach relies on a rarely used projective method: “Album-on-Line” (AOL). This technique allows identifying consumers’ representations of their experience. It uses images to immerse participants in a virtual experience and to lead an individual reflection, then a group reflection.

Virtual experiences have utilitarian, hedonic, psychological and social dimensions. When immersing in virtual experiences, consumers’ perception and consumption of products and services change. A projection occurs leading to an identification to virtual characters. This projection also leads to a consumption aiming at finding back the excitement and challenge lived during virtual experiences.

The main limitation of this research relates with the fuzzy distinction between the virtual and the electronic in consumers’ minds and even in the literature. Future work should propose a multidisciplinary definition of the virtual experience, considering its specificities and components.

This research offers companies a better understanding of consumers’ motivations to live virtual experiences. It may bring insights on how to provide a more customized offering and a more adapted communication.

Compared to previous work, the present research offers a better understanding of the components of online and offline virtual experiences by considering the virtual in its broadest meaning. The use of the AOL technique enabled a closer look at the specificities of the virtual experience as perceived by consumers. It was also possible to explore the “post-experience” stage by understanding the effect of virtual experiences on consumers’ perceptions and consumptions.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the different stages of business sustainability through a visual metaphor. This metaphor compares the interaction between the different variables of sustainability to the interaction between the colour wheels in the Interconnected Spinning colour wheel. As a result of this comparison, we propose the different stages of business sustainability.

Domains-interaction model approach is used to develop the metaphor.

The four stages of the business sustainability system resulting from this metaphor are: designable, feasible, endurable and responsible.

We recognize that a visual metaphor provides only a limited insight, which is a general drawback of a metaphor.

This visual metaphor as a tool will help practitioners, students and academics to easily understand the concept of business sustainability and the various stages of the system. This new perspective can support the practitioners in making effective decisions for sustainability.

This paper contributes in the field of corporate sustainability through the novel visual metaphor proposed. This metaphor can enhance the theoretical development in this field by approaching the concept of corporate sustainability from a different perspective.

Interactive media strategies and digital tools have enabled advertisers to target children with promotional offers and creative appeals.

Based on theories related to metaphors in advertisements, cognitive comprehension by children, promotional appeals, and presentation techniques, the research for this study comprised a content analysis of 1,980 online banner advertisements with reference to use of metaphors, promotional appeals, creative content, and selling techniques.

The research study concludes that online advertising to children, in contrast to traditional advertising vehicles, is characterized by (a) a vibrant visual metaphor, (b) surfeit of animated content, (c) interactive features, (d) myriad product types, and (e) creative content for a mixed audience of adults and children.

This study argues that the impact and content of the Internet as a new advertising medium are distinctly different from traditional characteristics of television and print.

Research on cultural entrepreneurship has explored the role of language in making and giving sense to novel ventures and market categories and in legitimating them. We analyze how an emerging de novo market category, quantum computing, is constructed through the use of analogies and metaphors. Through a multimodal analysis of interview and newspaper data, we find that in addition to using analogies and metaphors to highlight familiarity, actors also use such tropes to expound the weirdness of the new category, thus marking it as profoundly different and novel. Such tropes have a dual function; they draw the boundaries between science and laypeople but also arouse awe and curiosity among the audiences. Our study thus casts light on the cultural work during de novo category emergence.

To provide a descriptive case study showing how the construction of drawings as visual metaphors can help work groups “give voice” to their emotional reactions to organizational change events, and provide groups with a vehicle for interpreting and framing their experience of organizational change.

A seven‐person focus was asked to construct a drawing that would serve as a visual metaphor for conveying the group's reaction to ongoing organizational changes within their company. Following this construction, the group engaged in a self‐interpretation of their metaphor.

The work group's feelings regarding organizational change were encapsulated in visual metaphor of “dark tower”; a metaphor of which revealed that team members shared several strong, negative emotions regarding the organizational change event. A review of how the group's changes in metaphor construction evolved over three successive drawings showed how certain elements of the metaphor came to play a central role in the team's emotional expression of organizational change events.

This case study did not attempt to provide a comparative review of metaphor constructions across work groups, nor did it include the use of other research methods, such as structured interviews, to confirm these findings.

This study illustrates how the construction of visual metaphors can be used to help researchers gain a more in‐depth understanding of the subjective, felt experience of groups during organizational change events.

The group's reflections on how their successive drawings changed over the course of the construction of their metaphor sheds light on how “visual narratives” take form over time.

Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information.

The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory.

Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity.

Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms.

The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals.

This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of matching social distance and the concrete/abstract visual presentation of the threats of distracted driving in campaign design.

This study conducts a series of 2 (social distance frame: close vs distant) × 2 (visual rhetoric style: literal vs metaphorical) online experiments on the perspective of the construal level theory.

This study identified that a fit between social distance and visual rhetoric style of the threat enhances the effect of a social marketing campaign targeting young adults. A message framed in terms of socially proximal entities shows a favorable impact on young drivers’ threat perception and behavioral intention when the visual rhetoric depicts the threats of texting while driving more concrete. On the other hand, more distant social entities in the message show a better impact when the threats are visualized in metaphor.

This paper enhances the understanding of a threat appeal message design by adding empirical evidence of matching visual rhetoric style and social distance. The findings provide theoretical and practical implications for social marketing campaigns, regarding the strategic tailoring of messages, particularly in public service announcements that discourage texting while driving on young adults.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of metaphor “Digital India-Power to Empower” on citizens’ intention to adopt the e-governance while taking citizens’ attitude and emotional attachment with Digital India as mediating variables between citizens’ involvement and intention to adopt e-governance.

After reviewing the extant literature and using the learning from Technology Acceptance Model-Extension (TAME), a conceptual model has been proposed. The model is empirically tested on 224 respondents from India using structural equation modeling technique.

The paper suggested that the metaphoric promotion of E-Governance leads to a higher intention to adopt E-Governance. Metaphoric promotion has a positive influence on citizen involvement with E-Governance, which leads to positive attitude toward E-Governance. This positive attitude leads to citizens’ emotional attachment with E-Governance, which in turn leads to citizens’ positive behavioral intention to adopt E-Governance. In addition, there is a significant difference in attitude toward E-Governance with respect to education level and metro city dwelling, but there is no difference in intention to adopt E-Governance with respect to education and metro city dwelling.

As there is a dearth of research on the usage of metaphor by government and its effect on citizens’ adoption of E-Governance, a conceptual model has been prepared by using learning from metaphor studies majorly in non-government services.

As marketing and metaphors are rarely spoken words in E-Governance research, present study starts the much-needed conversation. In the past, adoption of E-Governance is studied in terms of technology attributes using TAM Model. The present study is first to explore the behavioral impact of E-Governance metaphoric promotion on citizens’ intention to adopt E-Governance based on TAME model. It raises the issue of marketing foundation of E-Governance in mobilizing the citizens’ intention to adopt the E-Governance.

This paper starts from the observation that the appearance of information contributes to its overall value and that, because there are many ways to represent information, it is very important to find the model which is going to be the most effective and conveys the greatest value of the original information. Appearance has always played a key role in the learning process, as it facilitates the discovery of new concepts by allowing visual association with those which are already familiar. This is why metaphors are so important in learning in general, and have therefore proved to be a valuable tool for designing alternative paradigms when adapting traditional tasks to novel environments. This paper will briefly discuss the link between paper books and their electronic counterparts. It will then focus on the role of metaphors in producing electronic books and introduce and discuss the importance of the visual rhetoric concept in driving the design process. Finally it will also present the main results of the visual book experiment and how these results can be interpreted in the context of the visual rhetoric approach.