User psychology of emotional user experience
Jussi Jokinen · Jyväskylä University Digital Archive (University of Jyväskylä) · 2015
Researchers of human-technology interaction have started to emphasise the importance of technology users' experiences: experience is an important aspect of daily life, and thus it should be taken into account in human-technology interaction research and in design of new technologies. However, scientific study of conscious experience is difficult, and the field of user experience research is afflicted by incompatible definitions, assumptions, and guidelines for investigating users' experiences and designing for them. This problem is emphasised by the lack of foundational framework, which would allow for comparing the metascientific and methodological assumptions behind different accounts of user experience. Here, such an account is presented in the form of foundational analysis of human-technology interaction. The resulting methodological framework is used to review theories of user experience with a conclusion that while the topics investigated under the umbrella of user experience seem to be the correct ones, their operationalisation lacks proper psychological basis. As a result of the foundational analysis of user experience, one of the core concepts related to conscious experience, emotion, is introduced, and different psychological accounts for it are reviewed using the methodological framework. Appraisal theory of emotion is shown to provide methodologically the best option for studying emotional user experience. A review of empirical studies, included as the articles of this thesis, supports this conclusion. Emotional user experience is discussed in terms of (1) a competence-frustration model, (2) individual coping differences in human-technology interaction, (3) mental contents of emotional experience, and (4) the non-conscious cognitive processes associated with the appraisal process. These elaborations can be used to investigate what users experience emotionally when they interact with technology, and explain these experiences. Such investigations should provide valid knowledge structures for designers, who aim to create technologies with certain experience goals.