Keywords

1 Introduction

With the rapid increase in the large amount of information and the explosive growth of large amounts of data, this has begun to give us more information to choose from, which has also led to dramatic changes in our information needs. First of all, the aesthetic needs of information were more pressing. The aesthetic of information is related to the pleasures of the user’s reading of information. Secondly, the information content needs to attract users, allowing users to be attracted by the information during the reading process. The information needs to be distinctive and attractive so that the user can more deeply understand the information and reflect the information expressed in the process of cognition. In this paper, information visualization research is mainly from the user experience and psychology theory, how to provide users with the better information visualization. Human-computer interaction design should fully consider the problem from the perspective of the user, so it is very important to define the role of the user in the communication of information and the needs of the user in the information transmission.

Faced with such a huge user needs and market competition, intelligent industrial monitoring systems urgently need to be innovative design to attract users in terms of function, aesthetic and interaction. User Experience is the subjective experience of a product or information system when the user is using it. For the user group of intelligent industrial monitoring and control system, the commonalities of the user experience are that the user can use the clear semantics while having the aesthetic. User-centered design and evaluation is to put the user in the first place in every stage of the design, in order to achieve maximum service for target users.

This paper discusses the role of user experience in equipment management system and how to improve user experience. Through the research and analysis, the paper summarizes the user requirements and the design points, through the visual design and experimental evaluation to improve human-computer interaction system of the equipment management. As shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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The theoretical framework of this study.

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2 Literature Review

2.1 User Experience

In the development of user experience, the research began in the 1990s by American psychologist Cognis Norman [1]. He thinks a good product should meet the user’s without boring the user and the product should be simple, elegant and pleasant to the user. Alben (1996) argues that user experience has permeated all aspects of users and interactions, including how users feel at the process of using, understanding of interactions or products [2]. Wikipedia (2009) point on that all emotions and experiences that users generate when using a product or system are called user experiences [3]. Nielsen Norman Group believes that user experience actually covers the needs of users in all aspects of engineering, marketing, graphic, industrial design and interactive design. The design of product and service interactions should be tailored to meet the needs of users in all aspects. We want to make users feel satisfied with the use and possession of a product, it must be combined with the elements of multiple areas to consider and design, and ultimately can be presented to the user’s design. The IOS (2010) standard defines user experience as “people’s perceptions and responses to products or systems or services that they use or expect to use [4]. The earliest user experience concept is mainly for the user experience of the product [5]. However, with the development of the Internet and the advent of the big data era, the user experience has gradually been applied to the Internet design. Product development and design must meet the needs of the vast majority of users. How to make users feel satisfied, first of all we should recognize who is the target user.

2.2 Information Visualization

Information visualization is mainly to provide users with a way to quickly access and understand the information [6]. Visualization realizes the visualization of abstract data through the combination of the color levels of the graphic icons. The abstract data includes both numerical values and non-numeric numerical values [7]. With the continuous development of information visualization, it has now permeated many industries, such as scientific research, internet interface design, data mining and digital library [8].

In the human-computer interaction interface, the basic principles of interaction design are formed by refining the common features of different interfaces [9]. Excellent design must follow the basic principles of interactive design. Larry Tesler argues that there are always some complications in the design. These complications exist in every aspect of the design. These complications cannot be simplified and must be converged in a reasonable way [10].

3 User Research and Information Architecture

3.1 User Research

Each product should have its own target user groups, delineated a relatively fixed part of the group, it is necessary to conduct their research analysis, the main purpose of the product is to meet the needs of the users. Building a reasonable persona is an important part of the design process. When using a product, there are usually novices, skilled and general types of users. Most of the users are general level. Design should follow the general level of users. In this paper, two-character roles are constructed through user research and analysis. persona 1(Xiao Xiao) is a student, the main requirement is to make an appointment and use the device, persona 2(Zhang Lin) is an administrator, the main requirement is to process student appointment and handle machine faults, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.
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Persona cards

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Through the construction of user roles, the needs of different groups of users are clarified so as to facilitate the construction of subsequent system function frameworks.

3.2 Information Architecture

Through literature review and character cards establishment, the research can clarify the user’s problems encountered in various stages of use, in view of these issues for equipment management system interface design, the system is divided into four major functional modules, reservation management, equipment management, data management, system settings. The main function of the reservation management is to provide a reservation for students, the administrator can deal with the reservation information and a view of the history reservation information. The equipment management function can monitor the status of the device, and it can view the device fault information and the running log. Data management functions can be used for data retrieval and uploading reports. System setting functions can manage the information of equipment and personnel, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
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Information architecture of the equipment management system

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Through a summary of user needs, this paper builds an information framework and presents the layout features of each function, including each of the main interface and the corresponding lower level interface, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.
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Wireframe of the equipment management system

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This paper summarizes the function and style of the system interface design based on literature review, user research and information architecture. In order to evaluate the difference between interface improvement before (material A) and improved interface (material B), this paper carried out the experimental evaluation, through the experimental analysis to evaluate the user experience.

4 Research Method

4.1 Definition

The experiment was a within-group design, all participants were tested the two experimental materials. We counterbalanced the experiment stimuli using a random method to compensate for learning effects. Participants were asked to complete tasks in random order. Each task was conducted one time for each participant. During each task, there are 15 s of break time.

The independent variables in this research were information layout and user background. The dependent variable is user experience which was measured in 5-point Likert questionnaire. Independent variables: (1) The information layout: the experimental materials had two levels: interface improvement before (material A) and improved interface (material B). (2) User background: user background had two levels: mechanical background group and design background group. Dependent variables: The user experience score used the five evaluation indexes of IOS9241-11 which were attraction, effectiveness, efficiency, fault tolerance and easy to learn.

4.2 Hypotheses

The hypotheses of this study are as follows:

  • H1: Information layout significantly affects the user experience.

  • H2: User background significantly affects the user experience.

4.3 Participants

A total of 30 undergraduate and graduate students at School of Mechanical Science and Engineering of HuaZhong University of Science and Technology were randomly selected to participate in this experiment, 13 male and 17 female and aged 18–35, which female of subjects accounted for 56.7%, male subjects were 43.3%. The mechanical background group and design background group each consisted of 15 people. All participants were the right-hand user. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal color vision, 4 participants wore glasses and 3 of them wore contact lenses. None of the participants had prior eye surgeries or eye problems.

4.4 Material

The experiment used the HUST advanced manufacturing and technology experiment center equipment network management system as the experimental material, the materials were shown in a 14 in. LCD Monitor (16:10, 1366 * 768 pixels), the experimental material was designed by Axure interaction prototype, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5.
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Interface improvement before (material A) and improved interface (material B)

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4.5 Procedure

Participants sat in front of the monitor in chairs set at a distance of about 40–50 cm. Desk and monitor position and height was fixed. The chair was adjustment to fit participant’s natural angles of elbow and knee. Test environment was a quiet laboratory without interference and noise. The room was artificially illuminated and only a minimum of objects was contained inside. Participants were instructed to switch off their mobile phones to reduce possible distractions during the experiment. Before the experiment began, participants were asked to read an introduction of the experiment requirements and then sign the “experimental consent”. Next, they read a short manual about the experiment stimuli to insure they were able to understand and solve the given task. Then, participants were asked to operate on the experimental material for typical tasks. After the experiment, participants were asked to complete the questionnaire immediately. A total of 60 questionnaires were collected after the experiment.

4.6 Experiment Task

Task 1: First, the user logs in to the system, and then enter the device status page, click device A-00001 to enter the device parameter page, and confirm the temperature of the device at the third node, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6.
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Flow chart of task 1

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Task 2: The user switches the main menu page, enters the data management page, clicks the data tag, enters the upload data page, and uploads the experimental data, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7.
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Flow chart of task 2

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5 Results and Discussion

Using IBM SPSS Statistics analysis, the results were as follows:

5.1 The Descriptive Analysis

Using descriptive analysis of SPSS, the following data results are obtained. Through the data and the graph, it can be seen that in the case of different independent variables, the variables of attractiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, fault tolerance, all showed significant differences. The score of the improved interface (material B) was higher than that of the interface improvement before (material A) in all indexes. Among them, the difference between attractiveness and easy-to-learn scores is the largest, indicating that the aesthetic level of the improved interface (material B) is obviously better than that of the interface improvement before (material A); the improved layout of the interface is reasonable and the descriptive text is added which makes it easier for users to learn and use the interface as shown in Table 1 and Fig. 8.

Table 1. Descriptive analysis of dependent variables of experimental materials
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Fig. 8.
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Bar chart analysis of experimental material independent variables (Color figure online)

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It can be seen from the data and the graph that under the circumstances that the users’ background variables are different, the variables of attractiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, fault tolerance and easy to learn have corresponding changes. In the circumstances of different users’ background, The variables in the indicators of the score difference is not obvious, the difference is small, which attractiveness, effectiveness, efficiency and easy to learn the four scores, the design professional scores were lower than the mechanical professional score, we can see that the design professionals are more demanding in aesthetics, effectiveness, efficiency and easy to learn, and mechanical professional have higher requirements for fault tolerance as shown in Table 2 and Fig. 9.

Table 2. Descriptive analysis of dependent variable in user experience
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Fig. 9.
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Bar chart analysis of user background variables (Color figure online)

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5.2 The One-Way ANOVA Analysis

The data analysis results show that when the experimental materials are independent variables, the sig ≤ 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the main effects of the five dependent variables of the user experience are significant under different experimental material independent variables. As a result, all the indexes of the user experience of the improved man-machine interface can be significantly improved, and the improved design of the man-machine interface has a significant effect of enhancing the user experience, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. One-way ANOVA of experimental materials
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The data analysis results show that when the user’s background are independent variables, sig ≥ 0.05, it can be concluded in the case of different users’ background, the main effect is not significant. It can be concluded that users with different backgrounds have basically the same user experience indicators, so in the design of equipment management system interface, more common needs in user behaviors should be considered, as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. One-way ANOVA of user’s background
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6 Conclusions

Through quantitative analysis of user experience and descriptive analysis and one-way analysis of variance, this paper draws the following conclusions:

  1. (1)

    The experimental material independent variables have significant differences in five evaluation indexes of user experience, with sig values both less than or equal to 0.05. Therefore, it can be concluded that the user experience score of the improved interface (material B) is significantly different from that interface improvement before (material A). At the same time, with the descriptive analysis of the chart can be learned, improved interface (material B) score of each index was significantly higher than interface improvement before (material A).

  2. (2)

    The user background variables have no significant differences in the five evaluation indexes of user experience, sig ≥ 0.05, therefore, it can be concluded that there is no significant difference in the user interface between the user ratings. Therefore, the design of equipment management system interface should pay more attention to the common design of the user’s cognitive behavior.

  3. (3)

    There are some limitations in this paper. The number of participants in the questionnaire is Inadequate, and most of them are students of HuaZhong University of Science and Technology, so the data are limited. In this experiment, two tasks are carried out, and the tasks are not comprehensive enough, and some of the functions of the system have not been evaluated. In future research, eye movement and electroencephalogram can be added to the experiment to obtain more accurate results.