User experience and service design

User experience and service design Anu Kankainen, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT User experience (UX) professionals work more and more on services. At least so far academic user experience discussion has not done much of discrimination between products and services but they are both considered as interactive systems that UX professionals design and academics study. Moreover, in the field of UX the concept of value is rarely in the discussions. Although, value-as-experience approach (see e.g. Botztepe, 2007) could be considered to be rather close to current UX thinking. UX practicians and academics talk about providing positive user experiences. There have been several attempts to define what is user experience already 10 years ago or so (e.g. Mäkelä and Fulton Suri, 2001; Roto et al., 2011) but it seems that the work is still ongoing. For example, Kuutti (2010) still calls for new perspectives e.g. from psychology and activity theory for the academic discussion of UX. Value - not values There are some researchers (e.g. Kujala and Nurkka, 2009) in the field of UX that talk about the importance of understanding user values when designing interactive systems. However, their definition of values is something different from how value is understood in the field of service design. Kujala and Nurkka (2009, pp. 98) define user values as psychological values that are user s general conceptions of desirable ways of behaving or desirable end states. They argue that in addition to considering the practical context-related needs of users, it is necessary to understand psychological values in order to design acceptable and desirable products and services. They approach is rather close to traditional marketing approach that suggest profiling customer segments according values and lifestyles but is not inline with the prominent value-in-use thinking in service design field (see e.g. Holttinen, 2010). The problem in focusing on psychological values, general conceptions is that their link to action is very weak (Schatzki et. all, 2000). From user needs to emotional responses However, everyone in UX field seems to agree that emotions are central in UX thinking. In psychology there is general assumption that the core of emotion is readiness to act and the prompting of plans (Oatley and Jenkings, 1996). In other words, emotions have motivational aspect. An emotion gives priority for one of few kinds of action by giving it a sense of urgency so it it can interrupt or compete with alternative mental processes or actions. Hassenzahl et. all (2010) also thinks that the starting point of experience-centred design should be user needs that are linked with emotions. They collected over 500 positive experience descriptions with interactive technologies in their study. Their results support the assumption that there is correlation with need fulfillment and 1

positive affect. They suggest that experiences could be further categorized by the primary, universal needs they fulfill even user experiences are always situational. Further, they found out that need fulfillment was clearly linked to hedonic quality perceptions, but not as strongly to pragmatic quality (such as usability). They propose that hedonic quality to be motivator and pragmatic quality as hygiene factor that can lead to negative affect but does not contribute to positive affect. The conclusions by Hassenzahl et. all (2010) could be somewhat questioned again by asking what kind of link these universal, primary user needs have then in action that is central in service design. Moreover, one could also question their conclusion that need fulfillment is clearly linked to hedonic quality perceptions of interactive systems. Not all positive human experiences are hedonic as Csikszentmihalyi (1990) studies on flow indicate. Another perspective to emotions besides addressing their link to user needs is the argument that UX is an emotional response to interaction with a product or service. For example, ISO 9241-210 standard defines user experience as "a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service". It emphasizes the outcome and memories of an experience - the reaction- rather than is dynamic in nature. This perspective focuses on a specific period of activities or tasks and relates to measuring experience of certain activity or system use. For example, Agarwal and Meyer (2009) developed a method that can be used in conjunction with usability testing in order to measure emotional responses with verbal and non-verbal techniques. However, what is questionable in this kind of approach is the overemphasizing the importance of single user tasks and problems in conducting them instead of seeing users emotional motivations and actions in context as possibilities for new designs. User experience over time Considering UX only as emotional response to something is also problematic from service design point of view since its link to action and context is missing. In fact, Bargas-Avila and Hornbaek (2011) did comprehensive literature review on UX research and noticed that it rarely focuses on context of use or anticipated use. However, there are some UX researchers who have noticed this problem, too. Karapanos et al. (2009) argue that UX discussion in the field of HCI has largely neglected so far temporality user experience over time. In their ethnographic study where they followed iphone users from the actual purchase to four weeks usage, they found out that while early experiences seemed to relate to mostly to hedonic aspects of product use, prolonged experiences became increasingly more tied to aspects reflecting how the product becomes meaningful in one s life. They found out that usefulness of iphones emerged through it appropriation in specific contexts and the changes this brought to study participants life. They also noticed that the usage of iphone became gradually part of people s daily rituals and suggest that designing interactions should focus on designing for habituated activities as 2

well. This particular notion is in line with Korkman s (2006) view on service development: the objective of service development is the cultural production of new forms of practices. However, Karapanos et al (2009) do not restrict the design to practices or daily routines but also mention that experiences over time should support people s identity that they desire to communicate in certain settings. In their study they found out that iphones supported over time participant s selfexpression and differentiating from others as well as need for integration and feeling part of a group. Also Boztepe (2007) identifies a third concept of value beside value-in-use and value-as-experience: value-as-sign. Co-experience Co-experience is UX related concept that addresses the importance of social aspects of experiences. For the ISO UX standardization work there was a survey reported (Law et. all, 2009) at CHI conference in 2009 that studied the views on user experience of 275 researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. The most controversial statement in the survey was Only an individual person can have an experience. An experience is something personal, something within a person. Some respondents argued that experiences are social and some thought that only individual can have feelings and experiences although social context influence experiences as technological context or physical surroundings. Despite the strong controversy, authors close their article by claiming that while experiences can be shared they still manifest themselves inside individuals and the ISO standardization work was decided to be continued with a single user point of view. Consequently, the role of social aspects in people s experiences with digital products and services is still undefined in the field of UX. Since UX practitioners are working more on more with applications and services that enhance social interaction, the social aspects should be investigated more. While social user experience still seem like an unexplored territory, there do exists some authors that have taken the social side of experience seriously. Battarbee and Koskinen (2005) have started the work by exploring the concept of co-experience by studying mainly mobile phone users. Their concept of co-experience emphasizes that experiences with products emerge and change, as they become a part of social interaction experiences are lifted up, reciprocated and rejected in social interaction. The meaning of products is formed in social interaction. However, there can be social aspects of user experience that affect it not just by changing its meanings afterwards, but also by influencing the formation of it. For example, people might gather into the same location in order to play games together because they prefer the experience of playing games with others to playing against computer or non-located humans (see e.g., Gajadhar et al., 2008) What happens to UX in transformation economy? One more notion worth to mention about UX is that, in general, UX approach is often argued for on the basis of experience economy introduced by Pine and Gilmore 3

(1999). However, already in their famous book (1999) on experience economy Pine and Gilmore stated: just like experience stagers before them, transformation elictors are greatly increasing their share of total economic pie. According to Pine and Gilmore, transformation economy is the result of experiences often painful ones - and required for transformations both on individual and societal level. In experience economy, the employees of staging company are actors performing parts, creating roles and building characters to engage guests, but in transformation economy all these experiential realms set the stage for helping the customer learn to act. Being in the transformation business means charging for the demonstrated outcome the customer achieves the transformation itself - not for the particular activities the company performs. Transformation economy is something that the majority of UX people have not yet responded to. It might require renewal in UX thinking by sifting focus from hedonic user experiences to something that changes users behavioral patterns, practices. The benefits of having UX perspective in practice-based service design Although this writing indicates that UX thinking requires still work, one can also see some benefits of UX approach. What it can bring more into service design is the understanding of customers emotions and being empathic towards them. It is clear that UX field cannot yet bring much more theoretical understanding on emotions to practice-based approach since emotions are already usually mentioned to be part of practices (e.g. Reckwitz, 2002) and some practice-based thinkers (Schatzki, 1996) agree that mental stages are not assumed to be only responses to behavior but instead they provide reasons why certain activities are performed. UX approach needs more psychologist (as Kuutti, 2010, calls for) to deepen its thinking on emotional based experiences. Instead, UX approach could already now introduce more emphatic design methods and techniques for practice-based service design approach, such as co-design techniques (Kankainen et. all, in press). At least, for example, Korkman (2006) did not explicitly include emotions as one of the elements of practices that he observed in his ethnographic study on board a large vessel travelling between Helsinki and Stockholm. That study is although a good example on practiced-based service design studies. References Agarwal, A., and Meyer, M. (2009). Beyond usability: evaluating emotional response as an integral part of the user experience. In the Proceedings of CHI 09. Bargas-Avila, J.A. & Hornbæk, K. (2011) Old Wine in New Bottles or Novel Challenges? A Critical Analysis of Empirical Studies of User Experience. In the Proceedings of CHI 11. Battarbee, K. and Koskinen, I. (2005). Co-experience: user experience as interaction. CoDesign, 1(1), 5-18. 4

Boztepe, S. (2007). User Value: Competing theories and Models. International Journal of Design, 1(2). Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row Gajadhar, B.J., dekort, Y. A. W., and Ijsselsteijn, W. A. (2008). Influence of Social Setting on Player Expereince of Digital Games. In the Proceedings of CHI 2008. Works in Progress. ACM Press, 3099-3103. Hassenzahl, M., Diefenbach, S., and Göritz, A. (2010). Needs, affect, and interactive products Facets of user experience. Interacting with Computers 22 (2010) 353 362. Holttinen, H. (2010). Social practices as units of value creation: theoretical underpinnings and implications. International Journal of Qulity and Service Sciences, 2(1), 95-112. Kankainen, A., Vaajakallio, K., Kantola, V. and Mattelmäki, T. (in press). Storytelling Group a Co-Design Method for Service Design. Behaviour & Information Technology. ISO 9241-210: Ergonomics of human system interaction Part 210: Humancentred design for interactive systems. ISO International Standard. Karapanos,E., Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi,J., and Martens, J-B. (2009). User experience over time: an initial framework. In the Proceedings of CHI 2009. Korkman, O. (2006).Customer Value Formation in Practice: A Practice-Theoretical Approach. Publications of the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration Nr 15. Reckwitz, A. 2002, "Toward a theory of social practices: a development in culturalist theorizing", European journal of social theory, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 243-263. Schatzki, T.R. (1996). Social Practices: A Wittegenstenian Approach to Human Activity and the Social, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA. Schatzki, T.R., Knorr-Cetina, K., and Savigny, E. (2000). Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge. Kujala, S. and Nurkka, P. (2009). Identifying User Values for an Activating Game for Children. In the Proceedings of MindTrek 2009. Kuutti Kari (2010) Where are the Ionians of User Experience Research? In Proc. 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2010), pp. 715-718. 5

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