The Experiential Dimension in Human-Technology Interaction

Leuven.
The final keynote for this first day at EuroITV 2009 is by Marc Hassenzahl, whose focus is on user experience. He begins by noting that technology needs to be humane; it needs to be adapted to people's actual uses. This is even more important as the boundaries between tools and content are blurring; however, the main tool for researching this remains human-technology interaction research, which focusses simply on usability engineering, on whether tools work.

But is functionality everything? What about the experiential dimension - the hedonic perspective that needs to be considered in addition to the pragmatic one? Both sides need to be considered: a product needs to provide value and fulfil task needs, but must also feel right and be enjoyable to use. This is now slowly being realised in human-technology interaction theory.

Interactive products, in particular, will be perceived along two dimensions: the pragmatic, and the hedonic. The former addresses the ability to achieve set action goals, a focus on tasks, and usability attributes; the latter the ability to achieve needs through action, a focus on the self, and identity and attitude attributes. Both sides are important. In addition to addressing the what and how of human-technology interaction, in other words, it's necesary also to address the why of using technology in the first place. Products need to reflect these reasons as well as the intended actions.

Fundamentally, the needs which users tend to address by using technology are autonomy, competence, relatedness, stimulation, influence or popularity, and security. Each such need, if fulfilled, is a source of positive emotion, and they are played out differently in different experiential contexts, of course. Marc now runs through a number of design experiments which implement such ideas.

Marc's research also surveyed the relationship beween need fulfilment, affect, and the perception of the technological tools used in the process. This uncovered that people enjoy themselves in successful need fulfilment situations, and in turn perceive the products used in a positive light as a result, but for very different reasons that depend on the specific context. This is far less about the usability of products than about the quality of the user's experience, then.

Usability in itself has no strong relation to needs or emotions - but it can substantially impede the experience. In other words, it is a necessary precondition, but not a sufficient predictor of positive experience. What is required, then, is experience-oriented design that focusses on users' wellbeing.

Technorati : EuroITV 2009, design, euroitv09, experience, interaction, needs, technology
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