User satisfaction modeling framework for automotive audio interfaces

• Interface features were successfully evaluated with the selected product attributes.
• Representative user satisfaction dimensions were extracted from the collected data.
• Relations between these satisfaction dimensions and product attributes were found.
• Four satisfaction dimensions are related to different aspects of product usability.
• Two dimensions are related with emotional and functional or usability aspects.

Currently the research on product satisfaction is evolving to integrate pleasure and delight alongside other, more traditional needs. Pleasure and delight are emotional and hedonic benefits experienced by the user when interacting with the product. Thus, user satisfaction models have to deal with high complexity of product properties that collectively contribute to satisfaction. The formulation of these models has to include not only a proper taxonomy, but also the organization of such properties in categories and their relation to well defined satisfaction dimensions. Successful models would help to find out the most effective technical and design specifications (engineering parameters) that give shape to specific attributes of design, sometimes called “brand feelings”, defined in accordance with the business strategy. The objective of this paper is to present a user satisfaction modeling framework that deals with the complexity of an in-car user interface, namely the audio one. The proposed framework defines three distinct types of product properties: engineering parameters (P), perceived product attributes (A) and satisfaction dimensions (D) and presents a methodology to link the perceived product attributes (A) to satisfaction dimension (D).Relevance to industryBetter understanding of the relationships between perceived and formal properties of automotive audio interfaces in order to contribute to better define their technical and design specifications.