Advances in Communication of Design

General training of typographic communication design focused on skill-based practices. Few scholars recognized the importance of conducting continuous academic research in theoretical and methodological aspects and on how to bring the humanistic elements and intellects to typographic design education. In this study, the research team found that ethnographic research method enabled designers to establish new aesthetic perspective and approaches that supports the fusion of cultural and functional qualities for contemporary typographic design. Eventually, the new teaching method increased the awareness to cultural sustainability and the possibility of experimental design. Methods adopted in this study aimed at exploring the effective approach for learning typographic design in undergraduate education. Participants’ feedback and reflection were collected and reflects that ethnographic research was an effective learning experience for elaborating the undergraduate students’ knowledge and skills in typographic design from the living environment to humanistic typographic communication design.

In this work, we show how simple sound patterns can be used to direct a person’s attention towards specific locations, when the sound is emitted from a single, fixed position. In interaction design, this is an effect most often achieved using visual ques, such as animations or flashing lights. Using sound instead is useful in situations where visual ques are undesirable or unfeasible. We designed two experiments with a total of n = 45 respondents. 10 different sound patterns were composed with inspiration from previous studies and used as stimuli. The results showed significant differences (p = 0.05) for directing the gaze upwards and downwards and trends for left-right. The composed sounds require no prior training, or knowledge of cultural references (contrary to e.g. earcons and auditory icons) by the respondents and can thus be regarded as universal in nature.

When performing an internet search for help content, people use one of several possible methods, but user preferences tend toward basic, text-based search queries using common search engines. However, computing and digital device trends show a preponderance of image and multimedia use among most users. This trend reveals a gap in the information design/technical communication discipline for understanding why users are unaware of alternative search methods, and why information design/technical communication is not investigating ways to develop the alternative image search methodology for help content and systems. Specifically, there is a lack of research on the usability and user preferences of image search for online help content. This research will provide an overview of the reverse image search technology, how we can optimize existing and future content to prepare content for its use, and a discussion about why this technology represents the future of user search experience.

This research is part of the author’s dissertation, which will approach the communication processes in the textile industry chain. This article proposes a literature review looking forward to establish the state of art of relevant issues regarding human factors and ergonomics, related to the communication interactions research line, supported on three theoretical axes: macroergonomics, internal organizational communication, and the process of communication auditing. This article looks forward to unravel the convergences and divergences among the authors presented, showing the discussions and conclusions, as well as a preview appreciation of methods for communication auditing focused on internal communication of organizations.

Websites have been used by political campaigns for nearly a decade and a half and the literature has adequately covered human factors aspects of political campaign websites with the help of usability, task analysis, and content analysis studies. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the relationship between campaign website visitor privacy preferences and trust in the candidate or campaign. This paper presents the idea that user preferences regarding political websites and privacy policies can inform the design process of such websites and impact user trust. The paper provides explicit recommendations for improving campaign website design with the ultimate goal of facilitating trust between young adults and those using a campaign website as a part of their bid for public office. It uses mixed methods to ascertain the privacy preferences among young adult political campaign website users and identifies several factors that have an impact on trust.

The Universities’ websites get each day more importance by acting as a communication channel that offers the most different information, reaching users in large scale. Websites are usually the first contact with the institution, or source of relevant data. Its value goes beyond the initial intention and purpose, becoming a vital part of the University’s personality. This article presents the outcome of a research made with 100 persons, where 85% having the most basic level of instructions, and 15% having Ph.D. title. The research sized people’s first reactions by accessing websites of the five biggest and most renowned Universities around the world, according to international rankings. Data analysis was focused on identifying the support to people’s expectations and needs, besides the facility of use, the interest aroused and respect to user’s time, not mattering user’s experience on using internet. The adoption of an unprecedented methodology that finds points where the interface designers must act to improve the usability and the results obtained showed the existence of a big field to be improved by websites designers when the focus of this communication channel is the user.

The use of color is a crucial element in painting, since any particular color would be affected by its surrounding colors in order to produce a different visual hue. This study focused on the study of landscape paintings and color, based on the study of art history, and investigates approaches via analysis of colors adopted by impressionist painters in western paintings. This study explores the elements of hues, brightness, saturation, complementary colors, and cold/warm tones in contrasting colors, as well as corroborating these elements in actual artwork. Landscape paintings primarily depicts local geographical and cultural features, while colors convey emotions and feelings. A work of depth exhibits a strong sense of emotions, integrates scenery and features to produce a theme with space for imagination and innovation.

Due to the popularity of social websites and smart phones, check-in services are regarded by companies as a means of consumer-generated advertising. This study explores the influences of check-in advertising on trusting beliefs for check-in content. This study is based on the media richness theory and the attribution theory to propose the research model. The experiment method is used to evaluate the proposed research model. The results show that, in trusting beliefs for check-in content, two-sided content is better than the content without text. In the research contribution, this research explores the applicability of media richness theory and attribution theory in check-in advertising of social media. Companies can apply the research findings to facilitate effective communication in check-in advertising.

With the spate of new media for different purposes, how should we study them collectively so that we can have a better understanding of them to develop their next generation? In this paper, we generalize new media from a designer’s perspective and adopt digital artifacts from new media including digital video, digital music, and websites to represent new media. We find out that these digital artifacts possess many characteristics of cultural products; therefore, it is possible to use the creative work ontology, which has a special focus on cultural products, as a starting point to generalize new media. We conclude that new media have rules, structures, features, and biases for the generalization.

This research project aims to create a functional system for learning and practicing flat tip calligraphy where students can acquire calligraphic skill independently without the aid of a teacher. The process of learning calligraphy involves learning the gestures and right movements while controlling nib inclination to obtain thick and thin areas in the correct sections of the character. There are two main skills to be acquired. One is the memorization of all the gestures necessary to draw the characters of a certain style. Two, the development of a conscious hand dexterity that will deliberately produce the necessary thick and thins by control of nib inclination in the movement. We are currently developing the Calligraphy Practice app, a system that has been proven to fulfill the previously mentioned needs. For this, we created a digital tool that emulates a flat tip brush accurately by allowing full control of the inclination throughout the entire drawing process.

Notifications represent a key element in smart devices. In fact, a device could be considered “smart” if it is able to provide different type of messages or notifications to the users. In this way, people who use smart devices receive a significant number of notifications daily. However, how many notifications can a user receive and attend daily? If the number of notifications increases a lot, it is possible that the user experience decrease. In this article, a study is carried out on the level of user’s satisfaction related to the number of notifications received in different smart devices. To achieve this goal, a survey was applied taking into consideration the following devices: smart speaker, smart fridge, smart TV, smart watch, smart phone, and car’s integrated computer system. The study comprises the participation of 439 people from 8 countries.

In modern societies using online meal ordering platforms becomes an emerging culture for Chinese citizens. The majority of the ordering platforms are based on smart phone applications. However, little research has been done on the credibility of online meal ordering applications and how to improve the design of these applications in China. Moreover, users of these applications begin to question about the credibility of these applications and trust issues appear. We investigate the challenges that these online meal ordering platforms face, for example, customers’ trust and its application credibility. We send out online surveys to explore the reasons why these customers use these applications. We conduct interviews to investigate the reviews of these application users and the users’ design suggestions for these applications. Observation has been conducted in order to better design the applications for these companies. The data show that the reasons why customers choose a meal ordering application are that 43.23% of the customers pay attention to various kinds of restaurants offered by the applications and 34.84% of them prefer low deliver fees. Well-designed application interfaces also attract 12.9% of the participants to use these applications. It also show that the participants concern about the information organization of the application design. Better navigation and information organization are expected for the platforms. We investigate the challenges that the online meal ordering platforms face, for example, website design, customers’ trust, and application credibility. This paper aims to provide design guidelines for these ordering platform companies to improve their application credibility and gain trust from their customers.

Recent studies reveal the importance of ontology in new media studies. However, there is not yet a commonly agreed new media ontology for media studies researchers and practitioners. Some scholars regard this insufficiency as the impracticality of localization in the existing ontologies concerning new media. We contend that a weak ontology that allows localization to happen should be carefully examined when developing a new media ontology. This paper is to disclose this potential of weak ontology to the new media community.

Most responsive websites are not very consistent. Thus, we revealed the elements and the factors that enable consistency in responsive websites in a multidevice context. We investigated the available research and the present state of university websites. We performed an evaluation experiment with five responsive websites and created 15 sample sites. We did an evaluation experiment with this. Consequently, we were able to obtain the elements and factors. We think that we can achieve a more natural multidevice experience through this knowledge.

The main purpose of this paper is to reduce the awareness conflict between users and designers with methods of linguistic metaphor analysis and spatial gestures based on image schema. Two experiments are designed in this paper. The research methods include situation simulation, oral report, Image schema extraction and path extraction from the gesture recording. The results of these experiments are integrated to generate a user requirements interpreting system. Visualized options are provided by capturing the spatial gestures from users so that language is transformed into a visualized expression. Spatial model can be established by capturing the spatial sign language paths of the users on the basis of image schema, which provide the designers with clearer design requirements guidance and a communication platform for both users and designers.