Co-experience: Understanding user experiences in social interaction

FIGURE 22
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Even short and small field experiments with technology can lead to experiences
and insights. “Sorry, I cannot respond to your request right now”
– and taking a photograph to explain why.
mobile phones to signal a note-taking moment, and notebooks and digital cameras
to document the location and the situation. The analysis was done in two
stages: first only the notes were shared and we each sketched small drawings
with which we imagined what the picture would be like. This was an empathic
exercise, but also a challenge to see what kinds of images the notes would evoke.
Finally also the photos were shared and compared to the drawings and notes.
In analysing the results, several interesting things emerged, for example
that close friends can sometimes accurately guess the angle and framing of a
photograph taken by the other person. But the design idea that emerged from
the experiment related to a moment of unavailability and the knowledge that
the mobile phone alert was likely to beep at any moment, requesting note taking
at a time that was inconvenient. I took a photo in anticipation to describe
what I was doing and why I could not take notes. This brought forth the idea
of using photographs to communicate unavailability (see Figure 22). As we
had experienced, knowing another person’s physical environment and context
brings an added level of interpretation into photographs. The better two people
know each other, the more meanings can be offered and interpreted from
a single photograph.
The solution to co-experience and prototyping is to turn the traditional design
process around, where field testing has traditionally happened last, and treat