Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

favour of seeing people as actors. Learning happens through role-taking on the researcher’s
part. (Coulon 1995) Symbolic interactionism stresses the importance
of interpretation in the meaning making process. All things, be they physical objects
such as chairs and clothes, social objects such as mothers and politicians
or abstract objects such as forgiveness or ideology, get their meaning through
interacting with others and perceiving what kinds of meanings others have for
them (Blumer 1986). This is a very dynamic view of the symbolic interactionism
classic. Blumer’s version of symbolic interactionism reflects the environment
where it was created: the city of Chicago of the 1930s was a city of restlessness
with high immigration and social disorder. However, once these meanings are
learned, they remain relatively stable, and even in restless environments, people
strive for stability and respectability of conduct (Duneier 1992). Similarly,
in more stable surroundings such as present-day Northern Europe or the United
States Midwest, roles and identities play a greater role in how people interpret
each others’ intentions and actions, which makes interaction more stable compared
to Blumer’s view (McCall and Simmons 1978).
When translating the symbolic interactionist principle to design, symbolic
interactions are interpretations of a product’s meaning and of the meaning of
the experiences it provides, made relevant to the recipients. Therefore, by following
how people interact and communicate about or with a product, their
mutual process of evaluating its appropriateness, potential, purpose and meaning
is made evident also for a researcher to begin to interpret. In co-experience,
social interaction contains elements of (see Fig. 19):
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• Lifting up experiences to shared attention
• Reciprocating experiences (acknowledging, accepting,
reciprocating)
• Rejecting experiences (ignoring, making fun of,
downplaying, rejecting).
The “shared attention” creation proceeds in the interpretations and actions of
its participants: from the feedback and responses of others people can determine
what part of the lifted up experience has been received and how it has
been interpreted, and fit their responses accordingly.
For instance, an example in article 4 (Battarbee & Koskinen forthcoming)
shows a sample of mobile multimedia messages exchanged between friends.
Thomas has sent many messages about his toddler son having temper tantrums.
His younger single friend finally grows tired of the topic and gently
teases Thomas about the baby’s behaviour and Thomas’ lacking parenting skills.