User Experience & Public Product

USER EXPERIENCE&PUBLIC PRODUCT

Abstract— Nowadays the concept of user experience involving a person's behaviors, attitudes, and emotions about using a particular product, system or service is becoming very popular and important. In addition user experience with public products needs special attention. Different from other consumer or personal products that users own, public products do not belong to the user; they are shared with and used in front of other people. Thus, different concerns and problems are incorporated affecting the user experiences. By taking into consideration of the lessons named User Research&Experience Design given at Huazhong University Science &Technology; this thesis expresses the introduction of user experience and how it is integrated into public products’ needs.

Keywords-component; user experience, public products, presence of other people, feelings, task

performances

1.  Introduction (Heading 1)

User experience that is the conspicuous term of the last decade has been preceded by different components of the experience. However, it is surprising that most of these studies have solely focused on the products that we own and use personally although these studies tend to generalize and embrace all kinds of products while attempting to explain the user experience. It is rare that the focus is a public product – a product which is used by public, in front of public and is belonged to public. Surely, there are some studies which have involved some public products; yet, without the intention of focusing on “public products”. In fact, they have been mostly used just as example cases for those studies with representing no distinction from any other products.

Actually, bethinking the social psychology literature, it is striking that interactive public products and so the interaction with them can be different from other consumer or personal products that we own. Interactive public products need special attention and should be evaluated from their own sake. They have a special context. They are shared with other people and they are used in front of the public. Furthermore, they are usually not familiar to the users since users do not possess, choose or customize them. Hence, not only the context, but also the product properties and interfaces can mostly be unfamiliar to the users of these products. Besides, the users cannot usually spare as much time as they use their own personal products. Considering this distinct interaction, the presence of other people can have a great impact on the public product-user interaction. The interaction with a public product when the user is alone would be different from the interaction when there is a crowd around the user. Also, this special context’s impacts; i.e. the impacts of presence of other people, cannot be restricted to the task performances as seen in most of the social psychology studies, which are demonstrated in the following chapters. Users can also elicit certain emotions (hedonic experience) in relation to the presence or absence of other people, the importance of which is highlighted briefly above.

To clarify, the public products focus of interest in the scope of this study are the interactive ones; such as automatic cashiers, automated teller machines (ATMs), information kiosks, ticket machines, food and drink vending machines, etc. These are just few of the public products that are encountered frequently in our daily lives, yet the examples can be broadened since many products and services are becoming more digitalized and interactive not surprisingly with the pace of the technology. As the image below (Figure 1.1) shows the change in domestic environment and technology, it is natural that a similar change occurs in the outer environment, in public products. Rapid improvements in technology, beginning by electricity and pursuing with information technology, have shaped the domestic context. Looking at the outside environment, it is also seen that the products have been also affected from both the technological developments and user needs. They are not just benches, lights, and so on, but interactive screens, transaction systems which are highly embedded in our current lives.

[pic 1]

Figure 1.1 Change in technology and environments

In addition to being indispensable, the other reason for the interactive public products to be in focus is that they incorporate more and diverse aspects than the other products used by public by providing communication and action in two ways, from user to product and vice versa. The user makes a certain action to which the product or system reacts such as giving feedback, displaying information, performing service, and so on (Newman and Lamming, 1995). Also, for instance, since usability would be of greater importance in an ATM than a public bench, the effect of the social context could be higher; hence, no wonder that it is rational to concentrate on the interactive ones.

From this perspective, designers of the interactive public products need huge amount of information on user models and/or usage types. However, it is not wrong to say that the literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of the public product-user interaction which is significantly affected by the presence of other people around. Therefore, it is essential to focus on the presence of other people and the public product-user interaction interdependently in order to contribute to a good and satisfying user experience with these products.

1. Scope of the Study

This study aims to reveal insight about public product-user interaction with an emphasis on the effect of presence of other people on this interaction. In addition to this it is also shown to establish links between the social influence due to the presence of other people, feelings elicited during public product-user interaction, and corresponding task performance.As aforementioned, the social psychology studies have presented links between the task performances of individuals and the presence of other people. However, it is presumed hereby that the social context affects the feelings which as a result have an influence on the task performance during the user experience with the public products (Figure 2.1). Social psychology studies have also associated the performance changes with arousals but without emphasizing the specific feelings. Therefore, as user experience literature emphasizes, both the hedonic and pragmatic issues, with a specific attention on feelings and task performances, are in consideration hereby. Moreover, the task performances which have been dealt with in social psychology literature till now are mostly about duration and accuracy (Triplett, 1898; Allport, 1920; Dashiell, 1930, 1935; Cottrell, 1972, Zajonc, 1965, 1980). Yet, user experience, and even usability, includes diverse aspects while evaluating the task performances. Thus, in the scope of this study, diverse aspects of task performances are discussed in the related sections.