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：该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“受限制的探索”的原因--减少“尝试新事物”的倾向。该项目将调查导致勘探受阻的两个独立原因。第一个问题与老年观众的智力能力下降有关，他们倾向于改变行为以减轻这些能力的负担。探索会加载内存(以便跟踪已经尝试过的内容，并区分最近尝试过的事情和在其他场合尝试过的事情)。年长的观众会发现这些记忆任务更加困难，可能会选择回避它们，特别是如果他们害怕达到技术/屏幕的“灾难性状态”，无法返回他们久经考验的服务。许多界面设计努力都试图解决这些问题(无论是在BBC还是在其他地方)，因此调查这个问题仍然有多严重和重要变得很重要。同样重要的是，尝试发现年长观众的性格特点和可能改善问题的情况。限制探索的第二个原因是，年长观众可能会发现高级服务缺乏吸引力。这可能似乎是方案制定或提供服务的失败；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档新电视节目时，他们是基于对自己将喜欢的内容的预测而这么做的。但他们如何做到这一点呢？很容易预测你是否会喜欢你已经消费了很多次的东西，但新产品更具挑战性。事实上，一系列实验工作已经表明，快乐的预测和实际体验之间存在系统性的差异。同样，在发生时测量的快感(想象一下在电视节目中问某人他们享受了多少)和根据记忆回溯测量的快感之间存在着显著的差异。这些预测和享受指标之间的关系对于消费新产品至关重要，包括交互式数字服务。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口的情况下，哪些特定问题是突出的。该项目的第一阶段将使用现场访谈来探讨这些问题。面谈还将针对每一种原因进行分析，包括情景和性格参数。有没有一些年纪较大的观众对探索的恐惧是坚不可摧的/如果是的话，为什么？社会支持的作用是什么？(众所周知，社会支持会改变老年人行为和评价的许多方面，社会支持似乎会缓解对达到灾难性状态的恐惧，或者鼓励人们欣赏从新服务中获得的好处。)一旦对采访进行了分析，我们将更全面地理解受限探索的性质，我们还将有一系列案例或故事来说明其运作，以及它与服务和界面特征的关系。这些案例研究将被包装为说明性的设计场景，以捕捉好的和不好的设计实践。从采访中获得的理解将使我们能够为第二阶段的实验研究确定优先事项。探索实验将使用BBC未来媒体和技术部已经设计的解决方案的样机来评估界面设计解决方案。关于预测和体验享受的实验将使用新的内容来探索对电视内容的预测、瞬间和回顾判断之间的关系。

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.