User Experience Over Time - Modeling Users' Experiences with Interactive Systems - page 66

4.4.1 The Study

4.4.1.1 Product

We selected the iPhone as a product of study because of its proven success not only
during initial but also over prolonged use. This was considered important as we
wanted to elicit experiences relating to the successful adoption of a product in the
different phases as identified by Silverstone and Haddon (1996). The iPhone was
moreover considered an interesting example as it highlights some non-instrumental
aspects of experience (e.g. stimulation & identification (Hassenzahl, 2004)) that are
currently discussed in the field of user experience.

4.4.1.2 Participants

We recruited 6 participants through a prescreening virtual advert of an iPhone sale.
Our motivation was to recruit participants that were at that time considering the
purchase of the product before motivating them to participate in the study with a
monetary incentive. After responding to the advert, a second email was sent, intro-
ducing the details of the study and inviting them to participate. We observed a strong
bias for participants with technical background. In the final selection we aimed for
a homogeneous participant sample; only one participant did not previously own a
smart phone. Their age ranged from 28 to 33 years (mean 31y). Two out of six were
female.

4.4.1.3 Method

Our criteria for choosing a method were a) its ability to retrieve accurate recalls on
the product's perceived quality within single experiential episodes, and b) its ability
to elicit rich qualitative accounts on the experienced episodes. We chose the Day
Reconstruction Method (DRM) (Kahneman et al., 2004; Schwarz et al., 2008) over
the more popular Experience Sampling Method (ESM) (Hektner et al., 2007) and
event-contingent diaries (Bolger et al., 2003), as it enables capturing rich qualitative
accounts offline.
The DRM is typically conducted at the end of a reported day or at the beginning
of the next day. In an effort to minimize retrospection biases, DRM asks participants
to mentally reconstruct their daily experiences as a continuous series of episodes,
writing a brief name for each one. Experiential episodes are thus being recalled in
relation to preceding ones, which enables participants to draw on episodic memory
when reporting on the felt experience (Schwarz et al., 2008). Hence, participants are
better able to reflect on the perceived quality of the product within a single experi-
ential episode, avoiding inferences from their global beliefs about the product. As
demonstrated by Kahneman et al. (2004), the DRM combines the advantages of an
offline method with the accuracy of introspective approaches such as the Experience
Sampling.