Conclusions - Modeling Users' Experiences with Interactive Systems - page 137

elicited a wealth of personal attributes that could not be captured by standardized
questionnaires. Chapter 2 highlighted that diversity also exists within a single in-
dividual, in the sense that different attribute judgments of a participant may reveal
different, complementary, views. This diversity in perspective cannot be represented
in a single averaged view but requires multiple diverse views.

7.1.2.2 Dynamics of Users' Experiences Over Time

Product evaluation practices have traditionally been focusing on early interactions
and product qualities that are salient in these interactions. This work highlighted that
diversity exists not only across different individuals but also across time, in the sense
that different product qualities are valued at different phases in the adoption of the
product. Chapter 4 presented two studies that inquired into the dynamics of users'
experiences with interactive products. In the first study, judgments of the overall
goodness of a novel pointing device were found to shift from a use-based evalua-
tion dominated by the pragmatic quality of the product, i.e. usefulness and ease-of-
use, to an ownership-based evaluation dominated by aspects of identification, i.e.
what the product expressed about their self-identify in social contexts. Judgments
of beauty seemed to relate to perceptions of novelty during initial interactions, but
this effect disappeared after four weeks of use. The second study followed six indi-
viduals through an actual purchase of an Apple iPhone and inquired into how their
expectations and experiences developed one week before and four weeks after the
purchase of the product. The study revealed that the product qualities that provided
positive initial experiences were less crucial for motivating prolonged use. A tenta-
tive framework was proposed that identifies three distinct phases in the adoption of
a product: orientation, incorporation and identification , each referring to a different
relation between user and product, with different qualities being most salient.

7.1.3 Proposing Methodological Tools for the Study of Diversity

Lastly, we proposed a number of methodological tools for the study of the two differ-
ent sources of diversity: (a) understanding interpersonal diversity through personal
attribute judgments, and (b) understanding the dynamics of experience through ex-
perience narratives.

7.1.3.1 Understanding Interpersonal Diversity through Personal Attribute

Judgments

Traditional approaches to measuring users' responses to artifacts derived through
parallel design (Nielsen and Desurvire, 1993) lie in the use of validated psychome-
tric scales where measures are being defined a-priori by the researchers. We identi-
fied two limitations of such practices when one is concerned about inquiring into the
diverse ways with which users form evaluative judgments of interactive products.
First, it was argued that the a-priori definition of relevant measures is inherently lim-
ited as researchers might fail to consider a given dimension as relevant for the given