Last modified: 2012-02-10
Abstract
As mobile platforms become an increasingly vital part of our everyday life, hardware and software expands and evolves, and as products and services are developed faster, creating new opportunities, it makes sense to focus on social aspects in relation to mobile-related user experiences.
In general the theory of user experience is dominated by a focus on individualistic experiences and cognitive psychology, though a few researchers attempt to put spotlight on the social interaction in relation to the use of a product or a service. One of these is industrial designer and Ph.D. Katja Battarbee who advocates that even though experiences are subjective, the way in which they 'come to life' is a social phenomenon. Hence in order to study user experiences on mobile media platforms, the social context, in which the individualistic experiences evolve, has to be taken into consideration, as mobile media platforms and content is an integrated part of our everyday life and part of our experiences in many rooms, places and situations. Mobile media is affected by the social context and the social interactions. Furthermore mobile media also mediates new kinds of social situations in specific contexts as a consequence of the presence of the mobile media.
The focus in this paper is on how and in what way social interactions influence mobile media use and the experience of the media and vice versa. Furthermore the paper will address what kind of role mobile media content and applications play in respectively experience-based attractions and in everyday-like séances.
Two large-scale mobile media projects is the empirical foundation of the paper. The first project has a focus on mobile phones where an ethnographic approach has been conducted to examine, describe and characterize user experiences in five of the major attractions and theme parks in Northern Jutland. The second project provides comprehensive insights into the iPad tablet platform through a 10 week narrative inquiry study of more than a 150 user experiences, partly of the tablet media itself and partly in regard to concrete usage situations.
The research concludes that the social context is of great importance in the clarification, reflection and determination of whether the user experience is overall positive or negative. Furthermore it highlights that the social context should be regarded as an equal important element as for example usability, aesthetics and functionality or features of the mobile media platform when focus is on the user experience. At some points in the use of the product or service the social context can even be considered the decisive element. Based on this a new experience design perspective is suggested and discussed concerning how designers of social mobile software, content or experiences can benefit from incorporating co-operative elements either in specific use cases or in a designed user journey.