A UX Researcher.
What makes a GUI Kawaii ?
Anirudh Kundu, Michiko Ohkura
A research study conducted in collaboration with SIT research laboratories, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan focussed on Kawaii Attributes and their effects on the User Experience of Graphical User Interfaces.
Introduction
‘Kawaii’ is a word of Japanese origin that means “cute,” “lovable,” or “charming.” This has evolved to become a cultural concept or an emotional domain that relates to something or someone lovely, or someone or something that invokes the feeling of “wanting to protect”. The urge to interact, approach or to simply be with any product or situation can be classified as the influx of ‘kawaii’
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Many factors contribute to the Usability and Overall UX of any GUI, 'Kawaii-ness' is one such tool for screen designers. Hence, it is important to generate a line of thought and design trend directed towards the same. The study thereby answers the question : "What makes a GUI Kawaii ?"
The research paper was presented in the HCI International Conference 2021, Washington DC, July 24th - 29th, under the thematic area of Design, User Experience and Usability (DUXU Case Studies II) and will be published soon in the Journal of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer (LNCS)
