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What drives customization?: control or identity?

Published: 07 May 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Customization - an attribute that lets users take control and make changes to the presentation and functionality of the interface - is becoming a hallmark of today's interactive media devices. What do users experience when they change interface aspects like fonts and colors, skins on mobile phones, speed dial numbers, privacy settings on social networks and different command menus in software? Do they feel in control? Do they see the customized interface as a reflection of who they are? More importantly, is the feeling of being in control a major driver of usage, or does sense of identity - a personal connection with the interface - prove more vital? This paper discusses the psychology of customization, reports an empirical user study designed to explore the relationship between customization, sense of control, and sense of identity, and outlines implications for design of customizable interfaces based on the findings.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '11: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2011
    3530 pages
    ISBN:9781450302289
    DOI:10.1145/1978942
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 07 May 2011

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    Author Tags

    1. customization
    2. sense of control
    3. sense of identity
    4. user experience

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    • (2024)Reducing Reactance to Ads by Voice Assistants: The Role of Ad Customization, Ad Personalization, and Privacy CustomizationJournal of Interactive Marketing10.1177/10949968241261301Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
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