Convenient, clean, and efficient?
Marc Hassenzahl, Holger Klapperich · 2014
Automation permeates everyday life in the disguise of fully-automated coffee makers, dishwashers, or self-driving cars. While being convenient, such automation may have detrimental effects on the experience gained through the (semi-)automated activity. This paper argues to be more sensitive to the experiential costs of everyday automation. To this end, it provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative comparison of a more automated and a more manual way of brewing coffee. Brewing coffee manually was more positive and more need fulfilling. This was due to the more intense experience of competence and stimulation. Automation focused people on the outcome. The process became meaningless, degraded to "waiting time." Overall, the experience became "flat", significantly less meaningful and enjoyable, but also less demanding. Automation turned a potentially experience-rich activity into something less satisfactory for the sake of convenience. Since we believe that technology should make everyday activities experientially richer rather than "designing them away," we discuss the emerging challenges for an experiential design of everyday automation.