A Sense of Dichotomy in Household Space and Smartphone

Abstract

In this paper, we apply dichotomous aspects discussed in architectural theories to electronic devices and explore the relationship. In order to investigate the similarities and the differences between how people’s attitudes change for the sense of individuality-communality and private-public in a household environment and in a product environment as the level of depth increases, we designed an experiment with a scenario that guides subjects to explore through a household space virtually displayed on a large display as well as a smartphone space on an actual phone. At the end of every task, we asked the subjects to complete a semantic differential survey designed using the terms used in architecture that relate to both social and spatial dichotomies. From this experiment, we can suggest that the use of analogy between the two environments is appropriate especially as the depth of navigation increases such as going into a bedroom or accessing a picture folder and that social and spatial dichotomies examined in architectural and geological research fields do exist in a smartphone environment in a way it makes sense such as front and back. Lastly, we realized that while the household environment provided static feeling overall, the smartphone environment provided dynamic feeling.