Summary exam material HMIT lectures
The role of Human media interaction = the psychological study of how people interact with media.
Lecture 1: User engagement
What is user engagement?
User engagement is highly linked to user experience. There is no direct definition of the state of mind of
engagement. There are different term and concepts that refer to this state of mind.
Types of engagement:
They all refer to a state of mind in which our cognitive, effective, and perceptual motor systems are al dedicated to
the same task and goal at the same time.
Cognitive-psychological perspective (engagement) = Describing and understanding the experience of engagement
Metrics perspective (engagement) = How much interaction does the user have with the product, and for how long?
(e.g., website engagement measured by clicks/likes/comments, sharing behavior, returning users, time spend on
website, etc.)
What is meant by Usability? = Assess whether a user interface is easy to use and meets requirements
(effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction etc.)
What is meant by User Experience? = Understand the deeper, personal experience of the user (affect/emotion,
motivations, attitudes, attention, engagement)
Definition Flow theory
It was popularized by Mihály Csikszentmihályi. He had interviews with chess players, rock climbers, dancers and
they all talked about ‘flow’ and ‘in the zone’. For example: lose yourself in a book.
What is flow? (EXAM Question) = State of a holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total
involvement, feel at their best, perform at their best– or optimal experience and engagement (it needs to challenge
you!)
Flow is the highest level of engagement (simply said)
What is meant by flow antecedents? =The factors that contribute to flow experience.
What are typical flow activities?
• (Extreme) sports
• Gaming
• Creative acts (composing, writing, painting, dancing)
• Web surfers
What is the difference for flow activities for computer-mediated communication in comparison with normal flow
activities?
,In computer-mediated environments, activity needs to be broken down into the task (main goal of the activity) and
the artefact (tool for accomplishing the activity). The mastering of artefacts within CMEs cannot be taken for
granted due to the complex and dynamic nature of the artefacts (computers).
à For example, calculating travel expenses with a spreadsheet is a much different activity than doing it with pencil
and paper.
Why do we care about engagement?
Positive consequences: It can enhance people’s performance, enhance learning, it is possible to measure
enjoyment/ Involvement etc.
The most important feature of flow is? = Challenge-Skill Balance: Flow = high challenge & high skill
What are the 9 FLOW features?
1. Challenge skill balance
2. Clear goals
3. Unambiguous/immediate feedback
4. Action-Awareness Merging (automaticity, effortlessness) (only aware of the current action)
5. Concentration (top-down attention)
6. Sense of Control (feeling of control)
7. Loss of Self-Consciousness (reflection)
8. Transformation of Time (forget time)
9. Autotelic Experience (intrinsically rewarding)
What are the consequences of an engaging experience? What impact does high engagement promise?
Keep repeating the activity, Exploratory behavior, Enjoyment, satisfaction, Positive attitudes & affect Enhanced
learning outcomes, Enhanced performance Sharing, recommending, adding.
What is meant by the PAT model and what are the antecedent factors?
The model is developed by understanding the flow theory. In computer-related activities the
likelihood of an optimal experience depends on the interplay between Person, Artefact, and
Task. These are the factors that contribute to flow experience.
What are the personal characteristics that may enhance the likelihood of flow?
Person’s trait features:
1. Autotelic personality = One’s ability to experience intrinsic enjoyment. Some people are more moved by
intrinsic motivation than others.
2. Exploratory behavior = The tendency to explore or investigate a novel environment.
3. Personal innovativeness= Willingness to try out new technologies.
4. Cognitive spontaneity = Individual’s playfulness with a computer, measure an individual’s inventiveness and
flexibility when s/he is using computing technologies.
5. Trait of absorption = A person’s state, in how much they can concentrate or how absorbed they can become. If
a person has a high trait of absorption, they have a higher chance of reaching a high state of absorption than a
person who has a lower trait of absorption.
,6. (Media literacy & skills)
7. Time distortion= If a person’s state enables them to experience time distortion, they will be more likely to
experience optimal. For example: when they put an engrossing book down and realize they have been reading
long past their usual bedtime.
8. Loss of self-consciousness = For example, a person may feel self-conscious when someone is looking over his
or her shoulder. Thus, he or she would be unlikely to reach an optimal state.
Person’s State features:
Mood, motivation, arousal, focus
Artefact (e.g., new media product)
What are the Artefact characteristics that contribute to the likelihood of flow?
1. Aesthetics = appreciating the look
2. Vividness = Breadth or number of senses (multimodality). For example, a video of a news event (with sound
and video) has more vividness than hearing the news on the radio without a visual stimulus. The more vivid an
artefact is, the more engaging it may become.
3. Speed of feedback / responsiveness
o Suppose the speed of an information system is tremendously slow. In that case, the user’s attention is likely to
be taken away, and they will lose his/her concentration on the specific computer-based task.
o For example, a delay in the mouse cursor moving on the screen or a delay in an avatar moving after instructed
it to move.
What is meant by telepresence?
Experience of presence in an environment through communication. It refers to a set of technologies that allow a
person to feel as if they were present.
à a person is more likely to experience flow if the artefact has certain characteristics leading to
telepresence such as vividness and responsiveness.
Task
Task characteristics that may enhance the likelihood of flow (Studying ‘Task’ is challenging due to difficulty of
identifying task characteristics):
1. goal-oriented (vs. exploratory) tasks:
- Goal-directed task, such as searching online for a store’s location, uses a directed search and has utilitarian
benefits, situational involvement, and instrumental orientation.
- Experiential task, such as general Web surfing or browsing, uses a non-directed search and has hedonic
benefits, ritualistic involvement, and enduring involvement.
à The findings are clear that goal-oriented tasks yield more flow experiences
2. Autonomy: is the degree to which the user determines how to accomplish the task (When the person receives
rigid instructions, it reduces the degree of autonomy the person has with the task).
3. Variety: is the degree to which a task has many ways to be completed
What are the different PAT interactions?
1. Task * Artefact
1. Task-technology fit:
Person * Task:
• Clear task goals: a person is more likely to experience flow if s/he has clear task goals, e.g., If a person had clear
goals on how to complete an assignment.
• Balance between skills and challenge: a person is more likely to experience flow if there is a balance between
challenge and the skills of the task. If the balance was off with too high of a challenge, the person would
experience anxiety, whereas if the person’s skills were too high, the person would experience boredom.
• Sense of control over the task is a person’s perception of his/her being able to do a task.
2. Person * Artefact:
1. Clear artefact goals:
2. Sense of control over the artefact
, 3. Perceived ease of use (PEOU): is a person’s perception of his/her being able to use a technology (artefact). A
person is more likely to experience flow if s/he has a high PEOU of the artefact.
3. Person * Artefact * Task
How does complexity of the task influence engagement?
A complex task could lead to more flow because it engages and challenges. On the other hand, a high complex task
could also overwhelm and yield anxiety. Thus, complexity may have a direct positive or negative influence on flow.
Let’s take tennis as an example for PAT model:
To have flow in tennis, you must feel good with the racket. There must be a good connection between you and the
racket (person and artefact). To have complete flow (play the game of tennis) there is interaction between person
and task (tennis game). This must be challenging enough and must match with your skills set (balance between
skills and challenge). There must be clear task goals, every game has clear goals (score points/win the match)
(clear task goals). And you must feel control over the task, for example if you play a double you need to have clear
arrangement and communication with your partner (sense of control).
How can we measure engagement?
It is hard to measure engagement, because we do not have access to the level of engagement which someone is
experiencing. This is fuzzy concept. It is difficult to operationalize user engagement.
What are the options to measure engagement? EXAM Question
1. Ask people: self-report measures (questionnaires) These measures are easy and fast to conduct, however
there are a lot if biases, such as ‘social desirability’ and recall, after-the-effect. Another bias is that give them a
questionnaire pop them out of the task, so you can give them only a questionnaire when the experience is over.
2. Measure the behavior of people: Objectively, we can measure behavior, yet this is proxy: we measure behavior
that is evidence of engagement, rather than the psychological state itself.
Stages of engagement (Oh et al., 2018). à EXAM QUESTION last year, list and describe all stages of OH et al.
model
They break it down in substages: (1) point of engagement, (2) deeper engagement and (3) behavioural outcome.
Degree of engagement:
1. Interface assessment = users’ initial evaluation of the interface. How do people assess and like the interface?
2. Physical interaction = the amount of observable activity of users with the interface. How many clicks/behavioral
interactions do people have with the product?
