Samenvattingen artikelen User Experience Design
Week 1
Class 1: Introduction UX Design
Book ‘Experience Design: Technology for all the right reasons’ - Chapter 2: Crucial properties of
experience
2.1 Subjective (versus objective)
Within its conceptual origins, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) was long time seen as an
“objective” approach.
In contrast, experience is subjective. It emerges through situations, objects, people, their
interrelationships, and their relationship to the experientor, but it is created and remains in her or his
head. Given that, it may not matter how good a product is objectively, its quality must also be
experienced to have impact.
HCI tends to dismiss the subjective. A lack of correspondence between an objective condition and its
experience is often understood as an error—on the behalf of the experience. As long as experience is
our design goal, the task at hand is clear: to better understand and to consider these transformation
rules while designing and in evaluation. The same objective condition may lead to different
experiences. A performance measure, such as task completion time, may not predict directly, that is,
without transformation, the experience of efficiency. At the same time, by knowing the rules, we
may shape experiences. Thus, by applying known transformation rules, we can shape experiences.
Unearthing (= opgraven) those rules will be an important future objective for any research-oriented,
experiential approach to HCI. Note, however, that experience remains an emergent, that is, it might
be shaped but never fully explained and predicted by objective conditions and transformation rules.
2.2 Holistic (versus instrumental)
I understand HCI as goal-directed action mediated by an
interactive product. Many action theories agree upon the
notion of a hierarchical organization of goals:
On the middle level are do-goals. A do-goal is a
concrete outcome, an actor wants to attain, such as
“making a telephone call” or “watching a movie.” Do-
goals exist to a good part outside of technology, but are
not fully independent. “Making a telephone call” can be
achieved through many different phones, Skype, and so
forth. p. However, without the invention of technology-
mediated communication in itself—and I would already
understand two tins connected by a string as technology—the very goal would not exist at
all, hence the do-goal in itself is at least born out of a general technology.
On the lowest level of the hierarchy are motor-goals. “Making a telephone call” can be
decomposed into sub-goals down to pressing buttons and reading single letters from a
display.
Traditionally, designing interaction is understood as designing the structure below the do-goal, that
is, arranging and covering all the sub-goals, down to the motor-goals. . The sub-goals and motor-
goals below the do-goal are deliberately designed. They may be similar for different interactive
products, but they are never the same. Just take your Nokia or iPhone and check what those require
“to make a telephone call.”
, In other words, other words, the interactive product embeds do-goals (by providing according
functionality) and provides ways to achieve them through interaction.
There is another level of goals on top of do- and motor-goals, the so-called be-goals. “Being
competent,” “being admired,” “being close to others,” “being autonomous,” and “being
stimulated” are examples of be-goals. Their nature is self-referential, that is, close to
people’s selves, whereas motor-goals are close to the world, triggered by the actual
interactive product and context. Be-goals motivate action and provide it with meaning.
“Making a telephone call” in itself is not a meaningful action. However, when feeling lonely,
estranged and irritated, maybe because you just missed the last flight home, another night in
an anonymous hotel and a lost Saturday ahead, calling your spouse to feel related, for “being
close to others,” may be a sensible thing to do. Given a salient be-goal, “making a phone call”
becomes meaningful.
Feelings are integral to experiences (maybe even its core), inextricably intertwined with our action. It
is the unpleasant feeling of lostness, being alone in the anonymous hotel room, in the wrong city or
even country, which finally makes me pick up the phone to call my wife. And it is the warm feeling of
being loved, and the feeling of confidence that I will make the best of my situation, which signals that
my actual be-goal of “being related to others” was attained by the phone call.
The experiential approach to HCI must consider be-goals. Being holistic, thus, means to extend our
view beyond the mere do-goals—“beyond the instrumental,” to the underlying reasons for action,
the “why” of interaction. Given the suggested three level model, it becomes clear that experience
comprises of perception, action, motivation, and cognition—it emerges from the simultaneous
activation of those sub-processes represented by the three levels and integrates them into a
meaningful, inseparable whole. Designing and evaluating experiences implies to take all three levels
seriously.
2.3 Situated (versus abstract)
No two experiences are exactly alike. This is due to experience’s strong dependence on context, its
“situatedness.” Experience emerges from the integration of action, perception, motivation, and
emotion, however, all being in a dialog with the world at a particular place and time. In every
moment, we take the world in through our senses, and we change it according to our goals through
our actions. An Experience goes even farther. It is a story, experience interpreted, packaged, labeled,
integrated with our knowledge of the world, and stored away. Both, experiencing and a particular
experience, thus, exhibit an immense complexity, resulting in perpetual novelty.
Although two experiences may not be exactly alike, we may nevertheless be able to categorize
them.Schmitt, B.(1999, p. 61) suggests categorizing experiences “in terms of their generic emerging
properties.” He then puts forward processes as the important underlying distinction, that is, he
categorizes experiences as sense, feel, think, and relate experiences. In Chapter 4, I will present a
categorization based on underlying universal psychological needs, hence, autonomy experiences,
competence experiences, or relatedness experiences. Russell, J. (2003) understands emotional
experiences explicitly as the result of a self-categorization process. The actual, that is, all readings of
all elements and processes together, is compared to earlier experiences and general knowledge of
the world. Standing in front of this beautiful woman, observing myself, sweating, excited, and staring
intensely, I have the experience of just having fallen in love. Now, substitute the beautiful woman for
a large, wild grizzly bear, and it becomes fear. Love, fear, hate, surprise, and so forth are just this:
categories. By comparing reality to prototypes of experiences, which may define a category, we
create consistency and comparability of our emotional experiences. The same may hold true for
experiences with technology. Note that the actual categories may be subject to debate, the very idea
of categorization, however, should not. It is crucial to predicting and designing for experiences.
, Awareness of those patterns,their abstraction,and application to new cases lies at the heart of
Experience Design.
Accounts of particular experiences might differ; the essence of the experience itself does not.
Compare it to weddings, each a unique experience and all similar at the same time. Note, that this
does not mean to ignore context. We are still designing an experience, highly situated in itself. Even
with an experience pattern, such as “mind reading,” at hand, the designer’ task is still to apply it to a
particular product, used by particular people in a particular place. The designer contextualizes the
pattern. If well done, she creates a fully-fledged, positive experience, based on the “blue print,” that
is, the very essence of a class of experiences. It is the explicit reduction of experiences to their
essence and not the meticulous description of ever-new experiences, which enables design.
2.4 Dynamic (versus static)
Experiencing is a continuous stream, emerging from perceiving, acting, thinking, and feeling. An
experience is a chunk of this time, packaged, interpreted, and labeled—a story. Both concepts
highlight the temporal, dynamic nature of experience. “Every interaction with the computer—from
performing a search for information in a database that may last a few seconds to installing an
operating system that can last for hours—requires users to expend time” writes Steven Seow (2008,
p. 1)) in his book on Designing and Engineering Time. Computers are about interaction, interaction is
about space and time, and experience as a concept reflects upon this.
The order, the timing, and the saliency of single moments impact an experience. Thus, they become
subject to design—a way to make an experience better or worse.
An example is the recency effect: the memory of the end benefits from its relative proximity to the
moment of remembering/people remember the best things that happen at the end.
Many examples of studies in the chapter (see book) highlight the dynamic nature of experiences.
They help understanding the timing, shape and qualities of experiences as they unfold over time.
Given this, an interactive product—as a mediator of these experiences—will also be perceived as
dynamic. Product quality, thus, must be understood as emerging from the actual shape and rate of
change over time. It is neither stable over time nor can it be sufficiently described by focusing only a
single moment in time.
2.5 And finally, positive (AKA worthwhile)
Subjective, holistic, situated, and dynamic are defining attributes of experience and experiences. An
experience will never be objective; it will never focus on a small proportion of processes and aspects
only, and it will never be context-free or static. Positive as an attribute differs from this.
Imagine being mugged on your way home from a bar: the moment of realization, the feelings of fear,
sweating with a racing heart, an attempt to escape, hits and bruises, and the decision of whether to
fight back or to solemnly hand over the wallet, mobile phone, and keys. Afterwards, one might
experience relief of having made it in one piece, followed by burning anger, an urge for revenge, and
maybe even shame of having been victimized. Obviously, being mugged has all the attributes of an
experience discussed above. It is subjective—which becomes apparent the moment one
painstakingly tries to reconstruct particular events or to describe the attackers. It is holistic—an
inseparable blend of emotion (e.g., fear), action (e.g., fighting, running) and cognition (e.g., Can I
cope with the loss of my wallet?). In fact, the experience gets most of its meaning through the
deprivation of the need for autonomy and security, which emerges as feelings of helplessness, fear,
shame,and anger.The bruises heal quickly; however,calling the fulfillment of needs into question will
have shaking, long-lasting effects. Being mugged is also situated—imagine the difference between
being alone and being accompanied by a friend. A friend may add feelings of guilt (if you ran out on
