Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

(see Figure 20). After a while one of them decided that the experience had been
informative enough, and gestured to the other that he would be going back to
the “campfire” (Figure 21). The other thought it was a sign that a fish had been
caught, and waved back enthusiastically with thumbs up. This incident led
the students to think of a way to share the catching fish experience – through
tactile feedback in the fishing rods. All other equipment was elsewhere, but
through the rods two or three kinds of tactile messages could be shared between
fishermen who might otherwise be out of sight or not inclined to shout
loudly to each other.
Different variations of prototype use can be identified, which vary according
to the purpose, the functionality, specificity and robustness of implementation.
Experience props are objects that represent for example the size or form
factor of a product concept, which can be “used” or acted with in everyday life
to assess issues such as portability and help in participatory design activities.
Iacucci et al. describe their “magic thing”, a block of foam (Iacucci et al. 2000)
used in contextual ideation sessions. Simple, suggestive foam models were also
used with children in a participatory design session in the Maypole project
(Maypole 1999). These essentially help imagining use and learning about the
relationship of the concept and the context.
Off the shelf experience prototypes are existing products that can, with some,
little or no tinkering, provide a robust prototype for one or two key functionalities
of interest. Kurvinen & Koskinen used polaroid cameras and paper to
prototype an online photo album with a group of people (2003). Koskinen et
al. (2002) used existing digital cameras and communicators to simulate mobile
image communication. In article 1 (Mäkelä & Battarbee 1999), children
used Gameboy Cameras to see what kinds of mobile image taking experiences
they might enjoy. These are robust, functional, implementable tools that can
be applied for estimates or approximations of user experience or for particular
aspects of experience. The advantage of off-the-shelf products is that they
can usually be put into use early in the process, when they can still influence
decision making.
Experiential prototypes are specifically constructed to demonstrate an aspect
or quality of functionality or interaction that cannot be demonstrated with
off-the-shelf products or more refined combinations of functionalities. To communicate
the intended experience of the digital camera, a large prototype was
constructed to tune and demonstrate the experience (Buchenau & Fulton Suri
2000). The projects Pogo and LiMe at Philips gained much from using experiential
prototypes as well (Goulden & McGroary 2003). Experiential prototypes are
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