Inhibited exploration in older customers of digital services

英国广播公司未来的观众正在老龄化。然而，年龄较大的客户不太可能利用先进的数字服务：本项目将通过访谈和实验来调查为什么会这样。特别是，该项目将考虑“抑制探索”的原因，即“尝试事物”的倾向减少。该项目将调查抑制勘探的两个独立原因。第一个问题与年龄较大的观众智力下降有关，他们倾向于改变行为，以减轻这些能力的负担。探索会增加记忆负荷（以便跟踪已经尝试过的内容，并区分最近尝试过的内容和在其他场合尝试过的内容）。年龄较大的观众会发现这些记忆任务更加困难，可能会选择避免它们，特别是如果他们担心达到技术/屏幕的“灾难性状态”，他们无法回到他们久经考验的服务中。许多界面设计工作都试图解决这些问题（无论是在BBC还是其他地方），所以调查这个问题的严重性和重要性变得很重要。同样重要的是，试图发现老年观众的性格和情况方面，可能会改善这个问题。抑制探索的第二个原因是，年龄较大的观众可能会觉得高级服务没有吸引力。这似乎是方案制定或服务提供的失败；然而，最近关于决策心理学的研究表明，这个问题并不简单。当人们选择尝试一项新服务或观看一个新的电视节目时，他们是基于对自己喜欢什么的预测而这样做的。但他们要怎么做呢？很容易预测你是否会喜欢你吃过很多次的东西，但新产品更具挑战性。事实上，大量的实验工作表明，对快乐的预测与实际体验之间存在系统性的差异。同样，即时测量的快乐（想象一下在看电视节目时问某人有多喜欢这个节目）和从记忆中回顾性测量的快乐之间也存在显著差异。这些预测和享受的度量之间的关系对于包括交互式数字服务在内的新产品的消费至关重要。然而，这一领域的大多数工作都使用了年轻的参与者（学生），因此尚不清楚在老年人的情况下，哪些特定问题是突出的。该项目的第一阶段将采用实地访谈来探讨这些问题。访谈还将针对情境和性格参数方面的每个原因进行分析。是否有一些年长的观众对探索感到恐惧？如果有，为什么？社会支持的作用是什么？（众所周知，社会支持改变了老年人的行为和评价的许多方面，社会支持将减轻对达到灾难性状态的恐惧，或鼓励对从新服务中获得的东西的欣赏，似乎是合理的。）一旦对访谈进行了分析，我们将对抑制探索的本质有一个更全面的了解，我们也将有一组案例或故事来说明其操作，以及它与服务和接口的特征之间的关系。这些案例研究将被打包为说明性设计场景，以捕获好的和坏的设计实践。从访谈中获得的理解将使我们能够为第二阶段的实验研究确定问题的优先顺序。探索实验将评估界面设计解决方案，使用BBC未来媒体与技术部门已经设计的解决方案的模型。预测享受和体验享受实验将利用新的内容来探索电视内容的预测判断、瞬间判断和回顾性判断之间的关系。

The BBC's future audience is ageing. Yet older customers are less likely to exploit advanced digital services: this project will use interview and experiment to investigate why this is so. In particular, the project will consider the reasons for 'inhibited exploration' - a reduced tendency to 'try things out'. The project will investigate two independent causes for inhibited exploration. The first relates to older viewers' diminishing intellectual capabilities, and their tendency to change behaviour so as to reduce the load on these capabilities. Exploration loads memory (so as to keep track of what has already been tried, and to distinguish things that have been tried recently from things that have been tried on another occasion). Older viewers will find these memory tasks more difficult, and may choose to avoid them, particularly if they fear reaching 'catastrophic states' of the technology / screens from which they can't return to their tried-and-tested services.Much interface design effort has attempted to address these issues (both in BBC and elsewhere), and so it becomes important to investigate how severe and important this issue remains. It is also important to try to discover aspects of older viewers' dispositions and situations that may ameliorate the problem.The second cause of inhibited exploration is that older viewers may find advanced services unattractive. This may appear to be a failure of programme making or service provision; however, recent work on the psychology of decision making has shown that this issue is not simple. When people choose to try a new service, or watch a new TV program, they do so on the basis of their prediction of what they will enjoy. But how are they to do this? It's easy to predict whether or not you will enjoy something that you have consumed many times, but new products are more challenging. In fact, a body of experimental work has shown systematic discrepancies between the prediction of pleasure and its actual experience. Similarly, there are notable discrepancies between pleasure measured as it happens (imagine asking someone during a TV programme how much they are enjoying it) and pleasure measured retrospectively, from memory. The relations between these predictions and measures of enjoyment are crucial for the consumption of new products, including interactive digital services. However, most work in this area has used young participants (students), so it remains unclear what particular issues are salient in the case of older populations. The first phase of the project will use in situ interviews to explore these issues. The interviews will also target an analysis of each cause in terms the situational and dispositional parameters. Are there some older viewers who are invulnerable to the fear of exploration / and if so why? What is the role of social support? (It is well-known that social support changes many aspects of older people's behaviour and appraisals, and it seems plausible that social support will ameliorate the fear of reaching catastrophic states, or encourage the appreciation of what is to be gained from novel services.)Once the interviews have been analysed we will have a fuller appreciation of the nature of inhibited exploration, and we will also have a set of cases or stories that illustrate its operation, and how it relates to features of services and interfaces. These case-studies will be packaged as illustrative design scenarios to capture good and bad design practice.The understanding gained from the interviews will allow us to prioritise issues for the second phase, for experimental studies. Experiments on exploration will evaluate interface design solutions, using mockups of the solutions already designed by BBC Future Media & Technology Division. Experiments on predicted and experienced enjoyment will use new content to explore the relations among predicted, momentary and retrospective judgments of TV content.