Interface Affect And Familiarity: Some Implications For Designing The Interaction

While learning is increasingly understood as the result of a complex interaction having both cognitive and affective components, to date there is not comprehensive, empirically validated theory that addresses both aspects to support the construction of technologies that interact with learners in challenging new ways. This paper reports on a study carried out to explore the extent to which interface affect influences learning performance and whether familiarity with the interface style influences such affect, also how those variables relate to the learner's cognitive style. A clear relationship is determined between interface affect, being the reaction of a student to the style of an interface, and the learning outcomes achieved through the use of that interface. Little interaction was however observed between these variables and cognitive style. This suggest that certain features of the interface design and ultimately the adaptive behaviour of a learning system can be matched to the user's characteristics to promote positive affect and effective learning.