User Experience Over Time - Modeling Users' Experiences with Interactive Systems - page 74

many applications and which we have on it. It is nice to get recommendations
for new cool stuff you could use”

Experiences relating to Identification displayed a more complex trend (figure 4.6).
While experiences reflecting the personal side of identification increased over time,
social experiences displayed an initial decrease, but also a gradual and sustaining in-
crease. These two patterns were found to be rooted in distinct aspects of social iden-
tification. Experiences relating to self-expression (median day=8), e.g. announcing
the recent possession in social contexts, wore off along with users' initial excite-
ment. Experiences relating to the feeling of being part of a community sharing
similar values and interests, however, displayed an increasing and sustaining effect
(median day=24).

4.4.3.2 What Motivates the Transition across These Phases?

These temporal patterns were found to relate to three underlying forces: familiarity ,
functional dependency and social and emotional attachment . First, as users' famil-
iarity with the product increased, the number of experiences relating to learnability
problems, but also stimulation and self-expressive identification decreased:

[Day 15] “My typing speed on iphone is gradually improving... now I am a
big fan of this keyboard and I find it very comfortable and easy to use”, [Day
20] “With today's busy schedule I didn't even remember I had an iPhone. I
think the toy becomes just a nice daily use item - usable and good to have
but the initial excitement seems to be gone.”

Second, as users incorporated the product in their daily lives, they were experi-
encing an increasing functional dependency, resulting in experiences relating to the
product's usefulness and long-term usability:

[day 10] “...I am becoming a great fan of it. It's simply saving time”, [Day
15] “...I've slowly started adapting to those things and I must say it feels like
my phone-life got a little bit easier.”

Last, as the product is incorporated in users' lives, it not only provides the benefits
that were intended by the designers but also becomes a personal object, participate-
ing in private and social contexts, resulting in an increasing emotional attachment
to the product:

[Day 18] “My daughter seems to be attracted to everything that shines, and
whenever she spots the iPhone she grabs it. I try to distract her, by giving
her the iPhone's case. Unfortunately she is smarter than that : I find it very
funny to see that she likes the same things as me”, [Day 2] “In the evening
we had friends over for dinner. They are also quite technology freaks. Quite
quickly I told them that I've got an iPhone and showed it to them. I really
liked watching them playing with it...”