Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

He succeeds in terminating the reports, but at the cost of being called a crybaby
himself. In the example the friends share an experience, but they also interpret
it, reinterpret it and in doing so come to define their relationship for a
moment.
The example above is particularly rich with mixed emotions. These can be
interpreted from the exchange by taking first the side of one, then the other.
Emotions mark those experiences that are worth lifting up and sharing with
others. Thomas the father is proud of his son, but probably also amused and
frustrated by his temper. The single friend is first sympathetic, then bored, even
slightly offended that he is expected to sustain interest in wailing babies all day.
Thomas recognises the possibility for hurt pride and retaliates. These are the
experiences that they offer to each other, and their subsequent responses offer
clues to the interpretation of these experiences. Whether a particular response
was the intended one is plausible or debatable and is of secondary relevance
from the point of view of the meaning of the technology. In the process of the
chatter, the mock fight, the pictures of wailing babies and weekend afternoons,
the meaning of mobile multimedia messaging takes shape, renewed in the exchange
of each message. The messages themselves are documents of how the
experiences were selected and lifted up, but it is also necessary to “see the forest,
not just the trees”, the emerging bigger picture.
The argument thus far is simply that social interaction is essential to many
kinds of experience. Social interaction is not only a framing context; it invites
and motivates people to interpret and communicate the meanings for technology
for themselves and the social group. In interaction, people evaluate their
experiences and identify entities of experience that are significant for sharing.
These are created into custom-made interpretations according to the interests
of the others or otherwise taking into account the gist of what has been previously
communicated.
84 3 CO-EXPERIENCE
3.1.2 CO-EXPERIENCE AS A SENSITISING CONCEPT
Symbolic interactionism suggests the use of sensitising concepts. These are
concepts with relatively open definitions that however offer a perspective for
studying people. (Blumer 1986) The purpose of such concepts is that of scaffolds
in the construction of the house: they are put up to make constructing
the house easier but they are taken down before the house is complete. Sensitising
concepts offer ways to structure attention and observations especially at
the beginning when no observations have yet been made, while still remaining
open enough to let new interpretations be formed. As the perspective of studying
the individual is still strong, having another angle for focusing on the social