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the theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957), which postulates that after
a purchase there is a certain degree of psychological discomfort rooted in the dis-
crepancy between the desired and the actual outcome of the choice. The most likely
outcome of dissonance is attitude spread, namely, participant's efforts in justify-
ing their choice by adapting their a priori expected outcome, or in our context, the
perceived importance of their expectations.
All in all, the actual experience with the product seemed to be more influential
to participants' satisfaction judgments than their a priori expectations. Note, that we
do not claim that forming expectations about a future possession does not influence
experience; instead, we believe the act of anticipation to be a crucial part of our
experience. Often, anticipating our experiences with a product, becomes even more
important, emotional, and memorable than the experiences per se. It is only when
conflicting with actual experience that a priori expectations appear to adapt in an
effort of reducing the discrepancy between expected and actual experience.
Finally, what makes a product good and beautiful? Most studies suggest that
goodness is a goal-oriented evaluation, related to pragmatic quality perceptions and
beauty a pleasure-oriented evaluation related to hedonic quality perceptions (Has-
senzahl, 2004; Mahlke, 2006; Tractinsky and Zmiri, 2006; Van Schaik and Ling,
2008).
The current study has diversified this view. While goodness was on average re-
lated to pragmatic quality perceptions, it was significantly affected by stimulation
during orientation and by identification during social experiences. These findings
suggest that the overall value, or the goodness of a product is contextually depen-
dent, e.g. a novel product will be better than a more traditional one during our initial
interactions but not necessarily in our prolonged experiences. Overall, we showed
time to be a significant factor altering the way individuals experience and evaluate
products.
4.4.5
Implications for Design
What does this work suggest to HCI practice? HCI has up to now mostly focused
on early interactions. As a consequence we have been mostly concerned about the
product qualities that dominate in early use. We argue that the focus of HCI prac-
tice should expand from the study of early interactions to the study of prolonged
experiences, understanding how a product becomes meaningful in a person's life.
We therefore promote three interesting avenues for further research.
4.4.5.1
Designing for Meaningful Mediation
What contributes to the successful appropriation of products? When does a product
become useful in one's life? We found usefulness to be much broader than the func-
tionality of the product, relating to the impact of the functionality in participants'
lives. iPhone's usefulness emerged through its appropriation in specific contexts and
the changes this brought to participants' lives. For instance, the reflection of one of
the participants on the Notes TM
functionality was that it provided the freedom of
 
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