User-experience in design and use: enhancing the experience of media content with programmable surround lighting

Programmable surround lighting has the potential to enhance user-experience of media content, but there is a lack of research demonstrating this. Building on existing work in user-experience and Kurosu’s framework for user-experience design and evaluation, we developed a method for testing people’s experience of video content with added programmable controlled surround lighting. We employed simple video content to evoke a response of positive or negative affect. Using a repeated-measures design (N = 33), we manipulated the colour of surround lighting to enhance the affect response (yellow and green for positive affect; red and purple for negative affect) and then tested the benefits of added surround lighting. Yellow surround colour enhanced positive affect in response to video content and red surround colour enhanced negative affect. There was evidence of assimilation effects as a result of alternating coloured (e.g., yellow) and white surround lighting on affect. This work has implications for the choice of surround lighting colour to enhance user-experience, research design and substantive future research.