Emotion Vs. Experience; how to measure experience

I am trying to figure out how to design products / services such that they are fun (and not boring) to interact with. I realize that situation / context, the user history and time & space affect the outcome but still, I wanted to see how much can a proactive vendor or designer really do on their own.

For instance, an iPad, iPhone etc. are pretty fun to have and play with. Very few will argue that it is situational or user bkg or context or... Most will agree that these products are just cool; that's part of the reason why they thrive.

What elements were consciously, deliberately put into the system to make them fun or enjoyable? Or, was it all an accident??

I am finding that keywords User Experience, Funology come closest to this discussion. I am surfing on this topic. However, I am finding that measuring a User Experience is tough.

In my opinion an Emotion (an output to a single stimulus) is different from the end experience feeling post a series of emotional stimulations. Sometimes this post usage experience may be counter to the in-the-moment experienced emotions. Roller coaster is scary in the moment but fun after. Learning is boring during the moment but fun afterwards... of course, some of this is my opinion, but still you can see that there IS a difference between emotion and experience.

Now, I have seen people measure emotions... but I am now searching for how people measure experience. Do we rely on self reporting? Do we do physiological tests? Or... ?? What other choices are there?

Sai Gollapudi

put distractions for fun but evoke pleasure thru absorbtion

I liked reading Blythe and Marc Hassenzahl's paper on "The Semantics of Fun: Differentiating Enjoyable Experiences". In this paper they make a simple point: fun is influenced thru distraction and pleasure thru absorbtion.

What I liked here is that we can't just design fun into the product... we need to be clear on what is the character of the product that we are trying to evoke... if it is related to pleasure than we need to focus more on creating abosrbtion for the user... not spectacles and distractions. Makes sense.

Enjoy reading the paper.

Cheers,
Sai

Engineering enjoyment as per Karasek model

Karasek proposes a Demands-Control-Support model for work. According to Peeter, Asbjorn and Jan -- in a paper title "Enjoyment: Lessons from Karasek" -- the model can be applied to engineering of enjoyment as well

A design for enjoyment may utilize

• variability, unpredictability, surprise,
• engagement (with high frequency, immediate response),
• co-active, socially enabling

Authors state:

• user should feel in control and also needs to see the effects of the user actions
• user should be given multiple options / variations; give more than they expect; allow them to personalize
• design should make the user feel that she is part of a group; should allow her to do things together with others.

User Experience Vs. Usability

Usability:
- ease of use
- efficiency

User Experience:
- more complex and richer than Usability
- user's sensations, emotions, perceptions and behaviors are considered
- level of engagement
- degree of self motivation
- amount of enjoyment & pleasure derived by user

User-Object-Interaction / Sight-Seer-Seen

Quoting and Tractinsky, researchers Ardito et. al. in their positioning paper titled "Towards evaluation of User Experience", talk about influences on User Experience. Three things are highlighted: The user, the interaction and the Object (which is being perceived). Ardito quotes: “user’s internal state (predispositions, expectations, needs, motivation, mood, etc.), the characteristics of the designed system (e.g. complexity, purpose, usability, functionality, etc.) and the context (or the environment) within which the interaction occurs (e.g. organisational/social setting, meaningfulness of the activity, voluntariness of use, etc.).”

I found a very interesting parallel to what Sri. Adi Sankaracharya (ancient Advaitic philosopher from India) discusses in his text titled Drig, Drishya Vivekam. In this text (Seer, Seen, Sight), the focus is on this triangle. However, Sri. Adi Sankaracharya dwells more on the Seer / User and not neccesarily on the interaction or on the object being perceived.

In my work I am more curious on the two that Sri. Adi Sankaracharya left out. I am curious about we can engineer fun in our work.

Sai Gollapudi

good collection of scholary reading material on Fun

Check out this great collection of good reading material on fun. Syamzai went to great trouble in collecting and posting lot of cool references on the net. Thanks man for great work - I certainly found it useful and I hope others like it too.

Cheers,
Sai Gollapudi

research questions related to fun...

In my professional career as a R&D head and also in my personal life I have seen many services, products, systems being developed. Many enjoy great goal-orientation and sometimes even a decent user interface; yet, they suffer from poor usage - why? Some activities, despite being useful, are considered boring and not enjoyed by the consumer. Schools, lectures, classical art are good examples of this. Most people consider these items boring. In contrast, a game, a toy, a silly song or a action thriller movie are often enjoyed and relished. Why? ... this lead me to ask the following questions (which I consider to be my initial drive for research):

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•How do we take something that is considered boring and convert it to fun?

–Are there some basic principles we can apply to make this happen?

–Are the principles universals or specific?

–How can they be applied to corporate outputs like marketing, software products, hardware products, services etc.

–How does “gamification” fit into this?

–How does “funware” fit into this?

•Boring:

–What constitutes Boring?

–How do we define it?

–How do we know when somebody is bored?

–Is there a cognitive model for it?

•Fun:

–What constitutes fun?

–How do we define it?

–How do we know when somebody is having fun?

–Is there a cognitive model for it?

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Sai Gollapudi