The Aware User Experience Model, Its Method of Construction and Derived Heuristics

Abstract

Psychological experience possesses many different determinants of affective, cognitive, and behavioral order in complex interaction and mostly hidden to our consciousness. User experience models face this complexity by presenting a reduced set of variables and interactions. Most of these models have been created on a deductive but also largely intuitive basis. This poses three problems: First, the UX models’ authors don’t propose a systematic response to the question of “how to know what variables use into the UX model?” Second, most UX models overlook the components that arise to the user’s consciousness. Third, even with this multitude of UX models, UX designers continue to rely heavily on intuition. Based on previous work, we propose the Aware UX Model, built systematically, and gathering empirical users’ data. It focuses on the components, mostly thoughts, and feelings, that arise in the user’s consciousness. The model provides their characterization and a rational account of its emergence in the UX. In addition, we propose a construction method for UX models based on our own process. We expose a case study to substantiate the Aware UX model and to contribute to its validation. Finally, we propose heuristics coupled to the Aware UX model components.

Appendix

The During-Stage Components of the Aware UX Model

1. I know how to use this product. This is a confirmatory belief of the user while using the product. The user arrives to get the services promised by the product’s functionality without a problem. To do so, the user has evoked an appropriate mental model of the product. The mental models “are the conceptual models in people’s minds that represent their understanding of how things work.” (Norman, 2013, p. 26). This belief recognizes tacitly a correct usability with the product. Even if it seems a cognitive laden affirmation it could imply a positive or neutral affective state in the user.

2. I have previous experience with similar products. Experience is one stimulus that resulted in learning (APA, 2015). Being confronted with products with new and different functions and usability entails a significant cognitive-affective effort. According to the product appearance the user could take two paths. One, an exploratory path, where he undertakes a trial and error process to see if his manipulation works on the product. Two, he tries to recover appropriate mental models to use the product. Retrieval and memory resources must be assigned to this task. When a piece of retrieved information is good to solve the task at hand, mostly mental models of similar products, the mental content of “having experience” might come to our awareness. This goes hand in hand with part 3.

3. I remember what the product does and how it should be used. This confirmatory belief could be formed based on 2 and previous manipulation and direct knowledge of the product. It is a natural piece of thought in the flow of the experience because the user should strive to get the different functionalities the product has promised through advertising and other media. Especially during the first uses of the product, the user cannot be able to get all those different functions, so the next piece of thought, 4, comes up to experience.

4. It has different functions but the principal one is ok. This is the result of new products offering new architectures and integrating multiple technologies: even if the user explores it and try to get other functions, when he perceives that the product is offering him its main service, fluently, he stops exploring it. This is a necessary element to go into a good emotional state with the product, 5, leading finally to a state of flow.

5. Flow: it is not boring to be connected to the product. Flow is a state frequently present in the user experience. Flow is what makes an experience enjoyable (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Flow is present when a more or less difficult task is being faced effortlessly in a rather automatic way. The absence of negative emotions, such as boredom, and the presence of stimulating activity, 6, are paramount to flow. When there is flow the activities done with a product become autotelic, i.e., there is no reason to do the activity except because the user wants to feel the experience they make possible (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).

6. The product has harmony; it is comfortable. Harmony refers in everyday language to a balance among all perceptual elements, i.e., to a product presenting a consistent whole. In empirical aesthetics harmony refers to a product presenting perceptual goodness, i.e. it has a good gestalt or Prägnanz (Palmer, Griscom, 2013). This factor is interesting because it is a sensory aesthetic factor, different from all the other factors in this stage (mostly of cognitive nature). This factor adds a layer of positive affect on the user experience. Comfort is the aesthetic sensation for the kinesthetic sense (proprioception). It refers to pleasurable sensations linked to the movements and body positions afforded by the product (Hekkert, & Leder, 2008).

7. Its use is exciting, very stimulating. The presence of a highly stimulating environment is, because of perceptual, 7, cognitive or affective reasons, essential for flow experience. By definition, flow is pleasurable (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Flow is a complex construct with at least nine elements contributing to it (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Being a complex construct, flow summarizes a good experience with a product by encompassing different feelings at the same time.

The After-Stage Components of the Aware UX Model

1. Engagement with the product. I want to know more about it. Engagement is a complex quality of user experience “characterized by attributes of challenge, positive affect, endurability, aesthetic and sensory appeal, attention, feedback, variety/novelty, interactivity, and perceived user control” (O’Brien, & Toms, 2008, p.938). This is the foremost element in the after phase: with no engagement, the interaction does not go further. Low levels of engagement lead to impoverished interaction. A user’s high level of engagement with the product is an ideal objective. Engagement is a consequence of a global positive challenging experience that has turned out well for the product’s user. Moreover, and because of the presence of variety and novelty in the experience, the user wants to gather more information about it, maybe to enrich his interaction through the availability of more elements and to gain control over the interaction itself.

2. Easy to learn. I understand it and use it. Learning is crucial in user experience: is a change in the user’s behavior or capacities “brought about by experiences” (Reisberg, D., p. 460–461). Different forms of learning are caused in our interactions with products: associative learning and skill learning are common, especially to gain procedural knowledge (know how to perform some action with it). Skill learning should lead to automaticity for the skills involved during the interactions with the product, i.e., the skill is “run off as a single integrated action”, (p.460) even though it was composed initially of many different actions. There is a learning curve reflecting how easy or difficult is to learn to use a product for the first time (Reisberg, 2001).

3. It filled my expectations. Expectations are generated from current and past experiences; these are a mental construct serving to narrow down the range of possible outcomes of an event (Geers, & Wellman, 2009). Expectations are beliefs about future occurrences. If an expectation is filled, our prediction of an outcome had a small error allowing us to give better responses to future contingencies, i.e. with more adaptive value (Geers, & Wellman, 2009).

4. Recall and even nostalgia (reminiscence). It is well known that recalling an experience can arouse emotions linked to that particular experience. Nostalgia, together with longing and poignancy, are a group of complex emotions characterized by “both hedonically positive and hedonically negative feelings” (Shaver, 2009, p. 243). It has no simple cognitive appraisal because the product is mentally portrayed as highly desirable but temporarily unattainable (Shaver, 2009).

5. I looked good with the product in that context. This is an aesthetic self-assessment (Palmer et al., 2019) of oneself on one’s behalf. This evaluation is done by the individual but is referred to a context. “Looking…” has been identified as one indicator of aesthetic response. This shows how it depends on different elements contributing to the aesthetic response such as background colors, materials, illumination, etc.

6. How else could I use the product? This is imagination: it is a special “form of human thought characterized by the ability of the individual to reproduce images or concepts originally derived from the basic senses but now reflected in one’s consciousness as memories, fantasies, or future plans” (Singer, 1999). The user can reshape these memories into rehearsals or planning future manipulations of the product. The product, being no longer in the user’s sensory field, imagination is an economical method to explore and enrich the experience, all this happening in the user’s stream of consciousness.

7. Disconnect from the world: I get absorbed using the product. This is one of the characteristics of the flow experience: distractions are kept out from consciousness, making the user focused on the here and now with the product (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).

8. Marking functions are clear. They make visible the product’s technical functions showing “how the product is to be handled or operated” (Bürdek, 2005, p. 312). Unclear marking functions make the user unable to get the service the product delivers through its technical functions.

9. How to use the product in different contexts linked to other products. This factor concerns how the user’s mental model of the product (Norman, 2013, p. 26) shows the possibility of linking the product to other products in other contexts, i.e., connecting two different mental models. This factor is increasingly important due to trends in extending products into services by connecting them to the Internet.

10. It has a clear entry point to interaction. Having an appropriate mental model is not enough for the user to have a successful interaction: he must know where to begin the operation of the product. This is achieved by using good marking functions (Bürdek, 2005) providing hierarchy to the interaction, for instance, by applying a contrasting color to the product’s start button.

11. Awareness of the product’s brand meaning. There are four meanings delivered by the brand’s identity (Kotler, 1999, p. 572): attributes (labels associated to the brand), benefits (customers buy benefits not attributes; they are functional and emotional), values (symbolized by the company, they attract customers who believe in them) and personality (similar to personality traits). Branding consists of developing this deep set of meanings. Cognitively, a brand is a concept that is recalled due to a prompt in the perceptual field of the user, for instance, the logotype of the brand or a certain brand’s aesthetic style.

12. The product possesses X and Y technological advances. This is a comparison between the two product’s concepts. A concept is composed of features that, in this case, are compared one to one to identify one as superior in a specific item. Product superiority is “the differentiation in characteristics found between similar products that leads to one product being perceived to be of higher value and/or quality to the customer” (Haverila, & Fehr, 2016, p.570). This superiority is vital for customer and user satisfaction (Haverila, & Fehr, 2016).

13. I enjoyed using the product in that context. Enjoyment is defined as “an emotional response to the experience of pleasure” (Sundarajan, L. 2009, p. 155). Enjoyment can be experienced at three levels: first, as acceptance wriggles that are movements that expand or increase the perception of the product (its sound, appearance, etc.). They serve to explore the different aspects of the stimulus in an effort to continue interaction; they can form an extensive repertoire (as in tasting wine (Fridja 2010)). Second, “enjoyment is a reportable pleasure derived from the awareness of pleasure” (Sundarajan, L., 2009). Third, enjoyment is like savoring: the user turns the event of use of the product over and over in his mind; this contributes to extend enjoyment beyond pleasure.

14. The product’s use is original with that look. Consumers get bored with the typical appearance of their products, so an original and new product will get their attention (Veryzer, Hutchinson, 1998). However, originality in the use might produce an intense affective reaction because an incongruity of the use of the product with previous mental models of the product’s usability can cause a higher arousal level. Consequently, solving this incongruity will be strongly experienced (c.f. Snelders, Hekkert, 1999).

15. The product’s style is similar to products X and Y. Style conveys meanings and arises aesthetic, and emotional feelings in the user. Style is a way to make a product different or similar to competing products. Cognitively, presumably, comparing products’ styles asks the user to compare meanings, aesthetic and emotional feelings. Style is important because it allows the user to belong to a group (the possessors of a product of certain brand) but, at the same time, allows the user to be different of other people who possess similar products but on other styles or brands (Berghman, & Hekkert, 2017).

16. Using the product implied a change in the product’s perception. Using a new product implies new sensations for the user. Perception, by definition (Zimbardo et al., 2009), creates new interpretations of sensations, therefore, by using the product, a change in its perception is provoked.

17. Where can I learn more about the product? The question itself reveals the motivation to learn more about the product. The user wants to expand the possibilities of interaction with the product. This expansion is a consequence of a change in his pre-existing thoughts and behavior. Different ways of learning exist when interacting with a new product: by imitation, by trial and error and, through insight. (Strickland, 2001, p384-385).

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