Introduction - Modeling Users' Experiences with Interactive Systems - page 3

that subjective perceptions of usability are generally not correlated with objective
measures and seem to measure something else than merely effectiveness and effi-
ciency (Frøkjær et al., 2000; Hornbæk and Law, 2007; Kissel, 1995; Bailey, 1993).
This limited view on user satisfaction as a consequence of objective performance
was criticized by Hassenzahl et al. (2000):

“...it seems as if satisfaction is conceived as a consequence of user expe-
rienced effectiveness and efficiency rather than a design goal in itself. This
implies that assuring efficiency and effectiveness alone guarantees user sat-
isfaction.”

Subsequently, a set of studies tried to explain these observed discrepancies between
objective and subjective usability. Kurosu and Kashimura (1995) asked participants
to rate several Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) designs on both functional and aes-
thetic aspects. They found apparent usability, i.e. subjective judgments on usability,
to correlate more strongly with aesthetic judgments than with the systems' inher-
ent usability, i.e. objective design parameters that were expected to affects users'
performance in using the systems. Tractinsky (1997) and Tractinsky et al. (2000)
replicated this study and found that these effects persisted both across different cul-
tural backgrounds, as well as after participants had experienced the systems.
These early findings suggested that users' experiences with products go beyond
the effectiveness and efficiency in product usage. Consequently, the field of Human-
Computer Interaction quested for new concepts , measures and methods in capturing
a more holistic view on user experience. This development has gone hand-in-hand
with a shift in the contexts of study, from professional to personal (e.g., Jordan,
2000) and social (e.g., Forlizzi, 2007; Markopoulos et al., 2004), and in the design
paradigm from product to experience design (e.g., Buxton, 2007; Zimmerman et al.,
2007; Forlizzi et al., 2008).

1.2 Two Distinct Approaches in User Experience Research

User experience has become central to the design and evaluation of interactive prod-
ucts. It reflects a paradigm shift in the subject of product design and evaluation.
Buxton (2007) argues the following:

“Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we
design are the “things” that we sell, rather than the individual, social and
cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they
have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name”

However, user experience research is often criticized for at least two things: a)
for the lack of a commonly agreed definition of the notion of experience, and b)
for being identical, conceptually or methodologically, to traditional usability re-
search. Indeed, Hassenzahl (2008) and Wright and Blythe (2007), some of the
strong proponents of user experience research, criticize the use of the term user
experience in cases where the focus still lies in traditional usability evaluation, thus