Do knobs have character? Exploring diversity in users’ inferences

Physical controls are now ubiquitous in everyday interactions. Empirical studies of physical interactions have traditionally been exploring instrumental aspects such as error rate and experienced workload. Recently, affective aspects of physical interaction have attracted an increased interest. In this paper we further argue that physical controls might have a character. We describe an exploratory study that aimed at understanding whether individuals form character judgments of physical controls based on haptic information, and explored the diversity across individuals’ inference processes.