Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

CATEGORIES AND SUBJECT DESCRIPTORS: A.0 [General]: Conference Proceedings
GENERAL TERMS: Design, Human Factors, Theory
KEYWORDS: User Experience, Co-Experience, Interaction design
1. INTRODUCTION
120 4 PRESENTING THE ARTICLES
In the recent years there has been an increasing interest in understanding how
to design and deliver user experiences to consumers. Experience is seen now
as the next new business in addition to selling products and services [18]. In
the field of design the word “experience” is used to mean many things, such
as products, retail spaces and online content. In fact, it can be anything and
everything.
The understanding, however, remains that experiences are private and subjective
[18, 3] and what remain to be designed are the “contexts for experience”
[3, 9, 20]. This means that design supports the possibility for having certain
experiences while it is accepted that due to uncontrollable factors, the experiences
may also be different. Models describing user experience thus have focused
on describing experience [3] as well as defining the elements that contribute
to experience [13].
The advances in consumer products and available technologies are bringing
in new possibilities for product related experiences – an interesting example
is the digital camera, which has been available for some years already. How is
it used? Most of the time it gets no attention at all. Then a group of friends get
together – suddenly the camera is pointing and clicking, being passed from
hand to hand. Grouped closely over the display, the friends are commenting on
the expressions, posing for pictures, deleting, approving and smiling. It seems
that some experiences only come to life when they can be shared. How do current
models of user experience account for this?
This question arose from the results of the Maypole study [5]. The study focused
on supporting social interaction with new technologies. In the process of
research and design, existing products with relevant features were field tested
with target users. A field evaluation of the new GameBoy Camera was used to
understand what kinds of experiences a personal product that can capture and
share images might support. Collaborative use was important: teasing, editing
funny images, staging pictures and creating stories – all things done together
– were the most enjoyable features [12]. The final prototypes of wireless image
communicators were field tested with two families in Finland and in Austria [14].