Pre-Thesis Process Blog W3

Last week, I tried to dig deeper into the topics of my interests by asking relevant questions about my chosen keywords. They are very general questions like “What are the roles of UI/UX design and mixed reality in e-commerce”, as I placed too much attention on identifying the intersections of my topics of interests and I was desperate for a qualified research question.

After speaking with my advisor this week, I feel that it may not be helpful to overly focus on generating a specific question and the hypothesis at this point. As Professor Henaff suggested, I should try to ask more detailed questions about my chosen topics. Instead of general questions with a lot of large scope and vague concepts, it would be better to think about questions on very specific aspects of the larger topics. I should come up with as many questions as I could and then sift through the question list and distill the research questions that I could and would love to work on.

So this week, I spent some time working on the question list of the three topics (Web UI/UX Design, Mixed Reality, Home & Furniture) and their intersections that I want to explore further:

1. How can we express brand personalities and increase customer loyalty for used furniture sites through interactive aesthetics?
2. What is the impact of visual complexity on aesthetic perception in initial impression of websites?
3. How does call-to-action colors influence high-end furniture website user engagement?
4. How to achieve cultural applicability of user evaluation methods for a culturally diverse user base?
5. Why is hedonic quality more stable with experience of website use than pragmatic quality?
6. How does the use of 3D virtual worlds for social interaction affect the elderly’s perception of social presence?
7. What is the influence of the multi-sensory environment on high-end furniture shopping experience?
8. What is the influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on residential furniture customer engagement?
9. What are the design factors affecting trust and satisfaction with buying oversized furniture online?
10. How does the design of site landing page affect customer’s choice of online furniture stores?

After doing some research on the questions listed above, I picked 3 questions that I love the most:

How can we express brand personalities and increase customer loyalty for used furniture sites through interactive aesthetics?

An attractive design of a website is crucial criterion for users to understand its brand personality and decide whether to stay on the website or leave it. The first impression is what counts the most, especially for first-time users. I am curious about how interactive aesthetics help reflect the brand personality and increase customer loyalty in the online environment like used furniture sites where users have a lot of concerns with the trustability of information and the quality of the products.

How does the use of 3D virtual worlds for social interaction affect the elderly’s perception of social presence?

3D virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular as tool for social interaction, with the potential of augmenting the user’s perception of physical and social presence. Thus, this technology could be very beneficial for older people, providing home-bound older users with access to social, educational and recreational resources. However, so far there have been few studies looking into how the elderly engages with virtual worlds, as most research in this area focuses on younger users. Thus, I want to investigate the factors that play a key role in the elderly’s perception of social presence, and how to increase the quality of social interaction for older users in the virtual world.

What is the influence of the multi-sensory environment on high-end furniture shopping experience?

Customers’ perception of a product depends not only on the multi-sensory integration of the sensory inputs associated with the furniture itself, but also on the multi-sensory attributes (including smell, temperature, lightness and etc.) of the environment of the furniture store, just like wine tasting. I would like to explore more about the influence that a multi-sensory atmosphere can have on a customer’s shopping experience and decision-making process.

Link to Pre-Thesis Presentation I: https://richaelsun.medium.com/pre-thesis-presentation-i-44ea0625cb15