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closer to people) while a weaker relation can be observed with attributes relating
to stimulation (i.e. creative, courageous, original, creative). Pragmatic aspects seem
to be relevant for goodness judgments only for the first experiences with a product.
Over time, identification (i.e. what the product expresses about its owner) becomes
a more prominent aspect of the goodness of the product.
4.3.3
Discussion
Two questions were of interest in the current study: what makes a product good or
beautiful, and how does this develop over time.
As far as goodness judgments are concerned, we partially replicated Hassenzahl's
(2004) results. During the first experiences facets of pragmatic quality were the
qualities being most related to goodness. Users are still exploring the functionality
of the product, trying out new things and experiencing usability problems. As people
get used to using the product they learn to handle usability problems; at the same
time they restrain themselves only to part of the product's functionality that is most
attractive to them. The value of the product is now derived on a different basis, being
ownership-based rather than usage-based. Social aspects (i.e. identification) became
more prominent.
For beauty judgments, however, the results seemed more divergent. While Has-
senzahl (2004) found identification to be the quality being most closely related to
beauty judgments, we found stimulation to be even more prominent than identifi-
cation in the first experiences. In both cases, beauty seems to be related more to
hedonic than to pragmatic aspects.
This different finding can possible be attributed to the product sample. While the
current study employed a novel consumer electronics product, Hassenzahl's study
focused on different variations of mp3 player skins; such variations in aesthetics
and usability of the same product (i.e. a virtual mp3 player) may not affect the per-
ceived stimulation (i.e. innovation, novelty). Mahlke (2006), for instance, observed
a quality called expressive aesthetics (Lavie and Tractinsky, 2004), arguably com-
parable to the quality here called stimulation, to have an impact on goodness but not
on beauty judgments, during the first experiences with tangible mp3 players. The
nature of the experience also differed significantly in this study. Both Hassenzahl
(2004) and Mahlke (2006) asked participants to carry out a number of tasks in a
laboratory context; in this study participants had the opportunity to use the product
at their homes over an extended period. The first evaluation took place during the
first days of use.
After four weeks of use, stimulation seemed to loose its dominance on beauty
judgments. Eventually, users were not any more surprised by the product's stimu-
lating character and the product's novelty lost its power to make the product more
beautiful in the users' eyes.
Overall, despite the exploratory character of the study, it seems that we came
across some interesting results. The proposition that novelty and stimulation im-
pact beauty judgments resonates with Berlyne's work on stimulation and surprise
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