Technology as Experience

Abstract

User experience is now becoming central to our understanding of the usability of technology. Today many interactive technology companies describe on their Web sites their commitment to experiencebased design. There is also a trend in HCI communities to foreground experiencecentered approaches to technology, a movement reflected in several recent articles offering theoretical statements about the sensual and emotional conditions of interaction with technology. Thinking about Technology as Experience In a recent study we presented a basis for thinking about and evaluating technology as experience. We show how technology can be seen in terms of experience with technological artifacts. This approach orients us toward the felt-life of technology-toward engagement, enchantment, irritation, and fulfillment. But we also recognize that the feeling-life does not begin and end with the immediate quality of an experience, rather it extends across space and time to the sense we make of experience in terms of our selves, our culture, and our lives. To make these concepts usable, we have developed a framework for analyzing experience with technology [2]. The Framework Even though the framework is presented as a set of components, perhaps giving the impression of separable elements, each of these parts should be seen as intrinsically connected with each other, and, collectively constitutive of an integrated framework. The framework consists of four intertwined threads of experience and six sense-making processes.