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User Experience Theory & Practice

Eindhoven University of TechnologyEindhoven, the Netherlands

{g.caleca, m.cabral.guerra, m.p.c.v.lieshout, j.j.a.d.groot}@student.tue.nl

I. InTrodUcTIonThe aim of this report is to describe the design and learning process that led to the development of the UX toolkit; a tool that can help researchers in designing and evaluating user experiences that unfold within the complex landscape of everyday life. This tool is created by a team of four Industrial Design Master’s students throughout the course ‘User Experience: Theory and Practice’ (DCM140) held at Eindhoven University of Technology.

User Experience Design is traditionally defined, within the HCI community, as the practice of designing interactive products in a way that they can mediate the emergence of particular experiences (Hassenzahl, 2010). According to Hassenzahl (2010), experiences are unique, situated and subjective processes. Therefore the essence of designing for the experience lies in carefully crafting some specific key elements, which depend on the context. And with that addressing the highest level of existential human needs, also defined as ‘be-goals’.

To better understand and embody the meaning behind the term “user experience”, as well as its relation to the present and future of everyday life: a hands-on approach provides great value to the practice of designing products, services and systems that enhance the emergence of meaningful experiences in everyday interactions. To quote Marc Hassenzahl (2010, p. 38): “By focusing on creating positive, personally meaningful, and, thus, inherently evaluable experience, we have the opportunity to make people happier.” To effectively design for these experience outcomes, designers need to have the right knowledge, tools and methods integrated into their design and research processes; and be able to evaluate them. Currently there are no heuristics available for the evaluation of the user experience. This paper aims at contributing to that evaluation with the creation of the presented tool.

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Copyright Eindhoven University of Technology 2018.

Following this introduction, section II briefly elaborates on the literature reviewed in relation to the topics this project touches upon. It reflects upon background theories and related works, in order to define the design opportunity. During a workshop session the project team tried to find patterns in the lifestyles of four different students (the project members) and put them into the broader context of patterns and user experience in people’s everyday lives. In order to analyse the activities of the participants various theories surrounding the field of UX design were used. The insights gained through the workshop session can be found in the section III. These insights fueled the design process towards a concept that focuses on the everyday user experience related to waste management (section IV) and helped, together with the theories discussed to define evaluation heuristics concerning the user experience (section V). These heuristics were evaluated in a user evaluation session with the design (section VI) and adjustments led to the development of the UX toolkit which is described and evaluated in section VII and VIII.

II. BAcKGroUnd THEorY And rELATEd WorK

Behavioral change theoriesThe theory of reasoned actions (Ajzen, 1985) defines a causal link between individual beliefs and behavioral intentions, which are considered to be the most relevant predictor of human behaviors. In this theory, Ajzen describes the factors that determine the emergence of a specific behavior as composed of 1) attitude, individual beliefs related to the target behaviour and the expectations on outcomes, and 2) subjective norm, described as the degree to which a person perceives social pressure to perform a certain behavior. In situations where the individuals might not have complete volitional control, it is important to take into account also 3) the perceived control, defined as the individual’s perceived power and the belief of control over the behavior.

In order to develop strategies that tackle unsustainable behaviors offering the possibility for a change, it is necessary to take into account also a series of other factors, such as the knowledge and skills possessed by the user, the salience of the behavior and the environmental constraints that might prevent the positive change. Additionally, Ouellette and Wood (1998) suggest the existence of an indirect connection between past behavior and future behavior which can be often found in contexts

Giulia caleca Miguel cabral Guerra

Michelle van Lieshout

Jelle-Jan de Groot

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of low opportunity or unstability: there, past behaviors might have previously affected, for instance, the attitude or perceived normative pressure of the user. Otherwise, past behavior is often considered to be a good predictor for future behaviors, when opportunity is high and the context of the behavior is stable. This is often the case in everyday life situations.

The self-determination theory developed by Gagné and Deci (2005) defines intrinsic motivation as a feeling of being involved in a task because of personal interest and importance given to the outcomes of it, while extrinsic motivation comes not from the satisfaction given by the activity itself but from external factors related to it, such as monetary incentives to perform a task. Within the same study, the authors define only three universal human needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness. Although, other studies have identified more than three (Sheldon, K. M., Elliot, A. J., Kim, Y., & Kasser, T.; 2001). as important to create satisfying events. Reflecting on the theories (Ajzen, 1985; Gagné & Deci, 2005), Hassenzahl (2010) defines intrinsic motivation as a superior factor, when compared to extrinsic motivation, in providing a positive experience. In fact, extrinsic motivation is likely to fade away as soon as the extrinsic factor causing the motivation is withdrawn. This impact on motivation is connected to the idea that an extrinsic factor, such as monetary rewards, is “inherently inevaluable” (Hassenzahl, 2010, p. 36). Therefore, what is considered as ‘happiness’ derived from material factors is not potentially able to fulfil existential needs. The fulfillment of universal human needs provided by unique experiences is the core of why we act in a certain way, providing an internal strive towards a goal. This is what the practice of designing for the user experience focuses on. The ‘why’ is therefore one of the most important parts of the design of the UX toolkit.

Aiming at understanding why people behave the way they do, rational choice theory (Scott, 2000), differently than what above stated, takes the perspective upon which people are considered to behave in a certain way because of a cognitive balancing of costs over benefits in relation to the action they intend to perform. But in our view Schultz (Esser, 1993), whom strongly disagrees on this perspective over human behavior, is proposing a much more likely and complex view over the topic of cognitive decision-making processes. According to Schultz, people do not always act on the basis of cost versus benefit evaluations, simply because choices are not always made based on rational thinking but rather on the basis of widespread ignorance or rough typologies. Everyday actions are more often found to be performed in accordance with habits, routines and convenience, rather than with utility maximizing calculations. (Esser, 1993 ; Ouellette and Wood, 1998) This is why UX design cannot be evaluated purely based on rational and simply rated choices. Thus the UX toolkit should be, and is, eventually designed to include more qualitative questions and evaluation points.

An important variant to the rational choice theory, more in line with Schultz view on this theory, is the so-called subjective expected utility theory, stating how the perceived effects of a user’s action highly depends on the amount of available choices, as well as the optimization tendencies of the user (Schwartz et al, 2002). People are presented with choices recurrently throughout their days and a lower amount of possible choices can sometimes enhance an experience, with users being less likely to experience regret and being more satisfied with their choices (Schwartz et al, 2002). This, and that maximizing sometimes leads to worse results than satisficing, can be explained by the amount of choices overwhelming a person when needing to consider all. This theory was used in developing the design concept (see section IV) and the UX evaluation tool (see section VII). In both cases, the team strived for a balance between the number of choices given to be used for evaluation.

Experience and empathy theoriesExperience is defined by Hassenzahl (2010) as a specific moment that can be identified by a beginning and an end within the continuous stream of emotions and feelings that is the whole of experiencing. A particular experience “emerges from the intertwined works of perception, action, motivation, emotion, and cognition in dialogue with the world (place, time, people, and objects)” (Hassenzahl, 2010, p. 4). Therefore, every experience is considered unique, one of a kind. Every single experience, furthermore, is characterized by a subjective, situated and dynamic nature. For all these reasons, experiences cannot be exactly reproduced, but with research-through-design it is possible to identify the key elements to stimulate the emergence of a certain kind of experience. The essence of user experience design is, to mediate the emergence of experiences through the use of interactive products and systems, by carefully crafting elements and qualities of the human-artifact interaction.

The way the team approached the topic of evaluating user experience was to consider pragmatic qualities, defined as the “hygiene factor” of a product (Hassenzahl, 2010), and hedonic qualities, the “motivators” (Hassenzahl, 2010), as mutually depending upon each other: there cannot be one without the other in the design of a product, system or service, in order to achieve the emergence of a meaningful user experience. Meaning in interaction can be created by the fulfillment of universal needs, to which hedonic qualities contribute, but in order for this to happen the product also needs to be instrumental, removing the barriers that can enable or disable the possibility to shape a desired experience (Hassenzahl, 2010).

Defining users’ needs is not an easy task. Many techniques have been developed in the past decades, researching the best way to get inside people’s heads, but very few have achieved the goal of understanding what the users ultimately want. Empathic research (Smart, 2015 ) is one of those approaches that does not focus on asking users

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what they want, but it aims at bringing users themselves to understand their own needs. Empathetic understanding is a vital tool in fostering innovation. If we can better understand the people we are designing for, the better our decisions, designs and results will be. Therefore it is crucial, when designing a tool for UX evaluation that everyone is at the same line and talking about the same situations and emotions; including users. This last point explains the need for a UX tool that clearly illustrates the situation in question.

III. fABrIc of EvErYdAY LIfE

The project team tried to find patterns in the lifestyles of four different student (project member). These participants comprised of one sharing household with 4 other students, one sharing house with partner and two single living in studios. This diversity in living situations created a sample set with different schedules and habits. The results from this data collection was later used a the starting point for a design project in the topic Future Everyday.

Set-upBy creating a sequence of photos that cover a typical day in participants lives, participants reflected on the daily activities and artefacts that were involved. The daily activities could be stated as the “what” and the artefacts as the “how” of everyday life. The photos were taken by using the participant-generated photographs method (Thomson and Oelker, 2013) as input for a workshop about eliciting insights from the photos. This method was executed by four different Industrial Design Master Students from the Technical university of Eindhoven. The four team members reflected individually upon their photos before the workshop.

The next step was to elicit insights from the photographs taken during the workshop. Four different papers about particular perspectives on everyday life were read before the workshop about eliciting insights from the photos took place. 1. From intentions to action: a theory of planned behavior (1) 2. Maximizing vs Satisficing: Happiness is a Matter of Choice (9) 3. The rationality for everyday behavior (5) 4. Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior (8) These papers elaborated on choice making in everyday life.

With the insights from the four papers in mind, interviews were conducted based on the participant-generated photographs from the four students. Each student got interviewed once, the others asked questions based on the photos and took a certain perspective from one of the papers in to consideration. Questions were based on the activities (what) and on the artefacts (how) on the pictures. Also paper related questions were asked like: Do you always do this activity like this, and why? Do you consider this activity to be a bad habit, and why? (e.g. a lot of coffee) Did you rationally think about doing this activity?

e.g. Why did you grab this bread and not the roasted bread you had before? Why did you not take a picture of..(smaller action within the larger unit of the action)..? The insights from the interviews were then discussed and got synthesized into a comprehensive format of everyday life. This format is a collage that represents the insights from the workshop. The collage gives direction to the design topic and process. Research into the background of this topic was conducted after reviewing the collage and used to set design criteria.

InsightsA lot of choices of the participants were depending on other activities that were planned or should be done during the day. When there was a lot of time the choices were considered more rationally and when there was less time the choices were based on convenience and past experiences. For instance grabbing lunch: all participants had little time for lunch so they grabbed something easy at hand without thinking about healthy food, price or how much they actually liked it. Picking out clothes for the day was given a lot of consideration when there was time or important meetings were planned but was based on the weather of the previous day when there was little time. This accords with Ouellette and Wood’s theory about habits and favourable intentions towards behavior shown in the past in a stable context. (Ouellette & Wood, 1998).

In some cases the participants gave particular importance to a given artifact and invest relatively large sums of resources (like time or money) to purchase this exact item. For instance, in one case a student shipped a specific coffee from her hometown. In another case a student purchased a state of the art alarm clock / bedside light optimised for the perfect wake up experience. In both cases students the students strived to obtain the best product. However they did not go through an extensive selection process, nor did they feel overburdened by the choice, despite the large amount of choices available. In addition both students were very happy with the final choice and did not show any sign of regret after purchasing the item. These findings would categorise the students as maximisers, despite the fact that they did not seem to have any of the unwanted side effects that come with having too many choices (Schwartz et al, 2002).

It was interesting to note what the participants did not take pictures of. Sometimes a participant forgot to take a picture or didn’t realize he/she could have taken a picture of a particular small part of a larger activity. It was quite hard to take pictures of some activities due to the attention an activity took; if it was a short activity that took a lot of focus of the participant at that moment, a participant did not remember to take a picture. Also if the participant did not think about the activity such as doing the dishes no pictures were taken.

The team noted that a lot of the artefacts used by the participants were only used once (i.e. paper cups) and noted

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patterns in the consumption and everything we bought coming packed in plastic. Most of these artefacts were not used by rational choice but because there were either no other choices available or because of convenience.

With this last insight in mind and overwhelmed by the amount of artifacts, activities and possible choices, the team made a decision to focus on disposable products or single use items (SUI). Following this decision the team made a collage for a fictional character using pictures from the previous exercise and additional pictures to fill some gaps (e.g. washing the dishes). The aim of the collage was to identify and visualise patterns relating to what kind of SUI are commonly used, why the participants chose to use particular disposable artifacts, how this choice comes about and what users do once they no longer need these disposable products (See appendix 1).

conclusionDuring the insight collection phase the participant-generated photographs method was used (Thomson and Oelker, 2013) and the team members interviewed each other about their daily routines. From this activity and the papers mentioned earlier it was understood that: when there was a lot of time the choices were considered more rationally than when there was less time; sometimes participants forgot to take a picture or didn’t realize they could have taken a picture of a particular small part of a larger activity which was probably due to habituation; and all participants used a lot of disposable artefacts because no other choices were available available and/or because of convenience. With this in mind the focus of the design used to come up with the UX toolkit was placed on replacing disposable products and recycling.

Iv. dESIGn

Using the insights gathered in the previous phase the team came up with two “How might we…” (or HMW) questions to generate ideas around the problems previously identified. The questions were as follows: (1) “How might we reduce the number of single use products?”; (2) “How might we teach and/or encourage people to recycle?”. The brainstorming session followed the IDEO brainstorming rules (IDEO U, ND) and took approximately two hours. During this time the team generated twenty different ideas (see Appendix 2), and voted on which idea to move forward with. Following the vote the team researched case studies and theories related to the domain of the chosen idea and developed a complete concept during a two hour collaborative sketch session.

Some studies within the HCI community (Thieme et al., 2012; Mozo-Reyes et al., 2016; Altarriba et al., 2017) have already explored how persuasive technologies can be applied to improve user’s motivation and perceived skills to recycle, especially within the context of private waste management. Two of these studies looked at food waste at home and how it can be reduced through the use of social

persuasion (Thieme et al. 2012; Altarriba et al., 2017). The other study looked at a public environment, specifically a university, and researched how an augmented experience could affect the behaviour of people recycling (Mozo-Reyes et al., 2016). In this study researchers created the WeRecycle Bin, a bottle and can recycling bin with LED’s and a numerical display that would count up the number of items recycled. Our concept built on the success of the WeRecycle concept and tried to expand this concept to a recycling bin where people can dispose a variety of different items.

Our concept, the “Gamified Bin”, is a playful recycling bin that rewards users for recycling and doing so correctly. Gamification is an “umbrella term” describing the use of game elements in non-gaming contexts with the aim of improving the user experience and user engagement (Deterding et al., 2011). But also to motivate and reward the emergence of desired behaviors. This concept explores the opportunities of creating a playful experience by applying game elements to interactive smart devices in order to enhance a feeling of competence in recycling practices of everyday life. Research on workers engagement (Neeli, 2012) shows that gamification is, in fact, an effective method to improve workers engagement in physical, and to provide motives for working other than just the monetary compensation (Morschheuser et al., 2016): according to Morschheuser et al., game elements can act as “motivational affordances” in stimulating intrinsic motivation.

According to the self-determination theory (Gagné & Deci, 2005) the player of a game needs to feel autonomous, he needs to feel competent. Therefore the player should feel that he or she can make his own choices and is not forced throughout the gameplay. Competence can be stimulated through reaching small goals within the larger goal and positive reinforcements. To create the feeling of competence the gamified design should also be challenging (e.g. through dares, changing a behavior pattern, personal reflecting). Awarding of points, social reassurance and stepping out of one’s comfort zone are big assets in achieving autonomy and competence. Our concept takes these notions into account by creating a scoreboard where users can see how much their department has collectively recycled. The scoreboard displays the total amount recycled (e.g. 20 Kg of paper) and a relatable metaphor (e.g. equivalent to 10 Don Norman Books). In addition the “Gamified bin” uses sensors to detect each item that gets disposed in order to provide the user with feedback. The bin provides this feedback to the user by displaying a green light when a user disposes an item in the right place and a red light when the user disposes the trash in the incorrect place. This happens before the action of disposing is completed; as a warning of what is about to go right or wrong. In addition the bin rewards the user by displaying a short animation when the user disposes of his/her trash in the correctly. To punish user’s who dispose of all their trash in the same compartment, the bin makes

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a beeping sound and displays a sad emoji character. These animations and emojis are displayed in front of each user to ensure that users know who the Gamified Bin is “rewarding” or “punishing”. For a step by step description of the concept consult the storyboard in appendix 3.

v. HEUrISTIc EvALUATIon

The design concept described in the previous chapter, was devised with a set of user experience heuristics for the evaluation of how the design can be integrated into everyday life. Because of the little amount of user experience heuristics available in current research and literature, the challenge was to come up with heuristics for user experience ourselves. The definition of heuristics formulated in this report is based on Montazeri et al.’s (2013) definition of heuristics: a reasoning processes that could potentially offer a solution to a problem by providing cognitive processing shortcuts, while making arbitrary judgments, but that do not guarantee the achievement of the absolute best solution. In short, the formulated heuristics can be considered as guidelines to evaluate the emergence of an experience through the use of a product, system or service.

The approach used to elaborate the mentioned heuristics was twofold. Firstly, the team researched and analyzed background theories as well as related work, as described in the section II. Next to that the article, ‘A new framework for UX heuristics’ (Armstrong, 2017) and was read and the theories of Sheldon (Sheldon et al., 2001) and Hassenzahl (Hassenzahl, 2010) presented during the course lectures were looked at. These sources were evaluated and heuristics arised. Based on the previous literature, described in section II, and the participant generated photos, described in section III the created heuristics were evaluated and adapted.

The ‘gamified bin’ is the design concept the team designed, previously explained in section IV, aimed at creating a better user experience while throwing away trash in the canteen of the LaPlace building at the TU/e. This design was used as a vehicle for the design of the heuristics. To evaluate the heuristics better a user evaluation of the ‘gamified bin’ was conducted, using the heuristics as evaluation criteria and as a base for the questions asked within the evaluation. Beforehand hypotheses about the flaws and strengths of the concepts were made by the team based on each of the heuristics, these can be found in appendix IV. To evaluate the heuristics the hypotheses and outcomes of the user evaluation were compared and unexpected missed topics were added to the heuristics. Also excess topics were fused together. This eventually resulted in the design of the UX toolkit.

Based on the approach taken and previous literature (see section II), the presented heuristics for user experience can be categorized in two groups. ‘Pragmatic’ and ‘Hedonic’ heuristics. The interaction design foundation (Interaction

Design Foundation, N.D.) mentions usability as a part of user experience. Usability is an important part for user experience heuristics as stated that usability is what determines whether a design’s existing attributes make it stand or fall.

The convenience, which is a large part of usability, of a design plays a big role within everyday life. Therefore users need to make a balanced decisions between the amount of physical and mental effort. These usability aspects fit in with the pragmatic qualities. Besides ‘good’ usability, a user experience should also fulfil at least some of the need-satisfactions, items based on human needs, according to Sheldon (2001). The assumption made is that pleasure will automatically follow when these universal human needs are fulfilled. These human need aspects fit in with the hedonic qualities. It is most important that these hedonic qualities lead to a personal fulfilling why-reason for the experience; therefore only some need to be fulfilled, this is based on the audience. Our team proposed the following heuristics for creating good UX (before the user evaluation):

Pragmatic heuristics• The flow of presented information within the design

matches to the user task flow.• The design provides clear and immediate information

about the task at hand and easy access to frequently needed information.

• Expository information is minimal (there is no choice overload). Some choices should still be available (this is based on relevancy).

• (eventually) The design is easy understandable, no extra information is needed for use.

• Connections between elements in the design are clearly apparent (easy to know what influences what, and with that, understanding what happens and why).

• Consistent and clear terminology is used in the design.

Hedonic heuristics• The user should feel related to the cause/ task and

should want to contribute to the cause/ task.• Cater the individual as well as a group (if designing

for a social space).• The user is able to make their own choices and does

not feel forced to do something (merely be guided to do something).

• Have or support the flow, competence of the user and what he is asked to do matches in level of difficulty.

• User feels confident or feels somewhat competent in what he does.

• User feels positively reinforced to perform the task again/ regularly.

• User feels as if he personally positively contributed to the change in attitude/ skills/ knowledge of other people. Or other people support him because of his

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choices.• The possibility to integrate the task into the users

set of routines and habits (as it is structured). A few barriers that could influence this integration are: having the right amount of internal motivation; amount of available choices and steps are limited to prevent overload; Flexibility of the everyday schedule/ activities of the user.

• User feels safe from failure and/or real world consequences.

vI. USEr EvALUATIon

For the user evaluation the co-constructing stories method was used. The evaluation was conducted with an amount of 9 participants in total (three individuals and three duo’s). The aim of the evaluation was to evaluate the concept and gain insights on how to evaluate user experience with users. The user evaluation set up was inspired by the Norm Theory (Kahneman & Miller, 2002), which explains how counterfactual thinking can help people determine how they feel about something, by comparing the reality to a possible alternative (our concept). This helps bridging the gap between objective values and subjective estimations of it, by comparing a familiar situation to a new one, defined by Hassenzahl (2010) as “anchoring and adjustment” heuristics.

A user evaluation went as follows: Before each session there was decided on: one note taker, one interviewer and one back-up interviewer (to help with asking a question otherwise forgotten and preparing). The session setup is designed to make the user experience the new design concept compared to its current situation. Therefore the first part of the test started with a small story. A lunch tray with different kinds of trash, coming from the canteen was used to help participants empathize with the story. The tray had some typical lunch waste suchs as an empty can, almost empy salad bowl, empty yoghurt and soup cup, plastic cutlery and a napkin. With the filled tray before the user, several questions were asked:

• You just had lunch, and you want to get back to work, how would you proceed?

• How would your everyday lunch tray look like?• How would this be different in a different faculty

building of the university?• How would this be different when you are at home?• How is this when you eat alone versus when you eat

in a group?• How is this when you are in a hurry?• Is there a moment when this happens differently

compared to what you already told us before?

The next step was to present the visionary story (the design concept) by showing the user the storyboard (see appendix 3). The user was explained what was shown on this storyboard step by step. After that, their first impressions

about this concept were asked. To make the experience more real, a little prototype of the design was created. The users were asked to pick up the lunch tray and dispose the trash into the right bin. After the users went through this experience, the following questions were asked based on the user experience heuristics mentioned in the previous chapter.

• How does the flow of information within the design match the user task flow?

• Does the design provides clear and immediate information about the task at hand, and does it have easy access to frequently needed information?

• Are there to many choices to make (information overload)?

• Is the design easy understandable? Does it need extra information for use?

• Are the connections between the elements clearly apparent?

• Does the design use consistent and clear terminology?• Do you feel related to the cause and tasks and do you

want to contribute to this?• Does the design cater the individual, as well as a

group?• Are you able to make your own choices and does it

not feel forced to do something? (merely guided to do something)

• Do you feel confident or somewhat competent enough to use this design?

• Do you feel positively reinforced to perform the task again?

• Do you feel you positively contributed to the change in attitude, skills and knowledge of other people after using this design?

• Do you think there is a possibility to integrate the design into people their everyday set of routines and habits?

The last part of the session was about comparing the current scenario with the newly presented scenario. The following questions were asked at the end:• After comparing the past experience and the

envisioned one of this design, which one do you prefer?

• What can be improved in the envisioned design?• What is the added value of either?

After evaluating the nine different user sessions and notes taken, several outcomes related to user experience evaluation came to the foreground. A first note was that, when trying to design a user experience for everyday life, convenience plays a big part in accepting or declining a design. This was seen in topics such as proximity and the amount participants normally throw away. Because of the co-construction of stories, users also named situations that we didn’t think of before with sometimes solutions

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that might be better solutions to the problem than the design we proposed. They also named situations (in other countries) where colors for recycling were different from the colors we used for recycling; this inconsistency (even though it was an inconsistency through different countries and not within this country) made them confused.

Designing little ‘’nudges’’ in the experience should steer the user in a general expected experience, otherwise the overall experience becomes too complex or messy. An example is the placement of the rewards (the GIF’s after), this could be a problem due to their distracting nature (people don’t look at the throwing away of their trash). The pre- and after-experience are also of great importance for evaluating UX, even when users needed to do something small they wanted to know the why and what happened after they did it.

Our concept experience was designed in a linear way, meaning users make a set of single choices instead of considering 6 at once. The shape was designed t to help the users with ambiguous trash-items and where to place them but this did not help; probably because users didn’t go past it as intended and still considered 6 options at once. The shapes in the form of the thrash (such as the cups) however did help the users to make quick decisions. Nevertheless the affordances of a design should be considered from the beginning: do users interpret them the same as intended.

But one of the most important insights is about the calmness of the design. When a design is used in everyday life it should not require too much attention as it takes away from the convenience. Many participants mentioned the GIFs and sound might actually be too much for them (distracting and unnecessary). Personal encouragement is not always necessary, in our case many users already recycle their trash, and didn’t need an extrinsic reward for that. Therefore looking at what kind of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) the design offers is important.

vII. EvALUATIon TooL

Following the user evaluation, the list of heuristics formulated by the team was reviewed and adjusted according to the feedback. Furthermore, they were assimilated into a tool to help communicate them. The UX toolkit aims at helping designers to evaluate as well as to develop user experiences within the fabric of everyday life.

This tool aims at evaluating the specific and concrete everyday experiences on two levels that together can lead to a pleasurable experience. The team argues that only when the experience enables both good usability and, at the same time, the creation of personal meaning it can be considered to be a good and pleasurable user experience, balancing in between hedonic qualities and pragmatic qualities of the experience (Hassenzahl, 2010). The evaluation of the experience is guided by questions fitting to the aspects that the pragmatic and hedonic

qualities consist of. The questions in the model follow from the heuristics that the team created for evaluating a user experience.

In order to use the tool in the intended way, it is very important to set the situational and temporal boundaries beforehand. This toolkit challenges designers, in co-creation with the users, to create a storyboard, flowchart, customer journey or photo diary describing the experience or situation in question. A co-created storyboard helps evaluate the experience, in which the user is encountering barriers. The process of creating a detailed description of the user experience also ensures that there is a clear understanding for the context and forces designers to do a step by step analysis or development of the user experience. In addition it helps the designer expose possible design flaw and perfect the experience. Lastly, having a visual overview of the user experience makes it easy to reference specific steps or interactions in the user experience.

After defining the context in which the user experience takes place, the first criteria the toolkit asks designers to rate is the “Usefulness”. The tools does this by asking: “what is the value created by the solution?”. Once this question is answered designers can start assessing the user experience in question on two levels that together lead to a good user experience. The tool illustrates how good user experience is created when both hedonic and pragmatic qualities are present (Hassenzahl, 2010). The evaluation of the user experience is guided by questions derived from the previously developed heuristics and these questions are clustered into the two aforementioned qualities: pragmatic, relating to the what and the how of the user experience, and hedonic, relating to the why of the user experience.

vIII. dIScUSSIon

Summary and discussion of main resultsTo evaluate the tool, the team used the user insights collected during the user evaluation of the “gamified bin”, and employed the tool to assess the overall user experience of this concept. By using the tool the team was able to see the positive and negative aspects of the tool in use. In addition, the tool was shown in a poster format to three lecturers and 32 masters students of the industrial design faculty in the Eindhoven University of Technology. While showcasing the tool, the team had the opportunity to receive feedback from the aforementioned design practitioners on the tool.

Through these processes the team noticed that the tool is not self-explanatory and lacked space for the users to add content (for example with post-it notes). First time users had a hard time understanding how the tool should be used and navigating the canvas. In particular, these users found that filling in the Hedonic, or ‘why’, section of the canvas was difficult because of the amount of content presented. This could have been avoided by synthesizing the amount

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of information in this particular section. In addition, some students mentioned that it could help to make the questions smaller and add titles to the sections. This would create a shortcut for users navigating the canvas. Additionally this change could also help solving lack of white space in the tool for users who want to add post it notes.

Some questions were also raised in regards to the Pragmatic (or ‘what’ & ‘how’) section of the tool. One of the lecturers questioned if using a one to five rating was the best way to assess non-quantifiable criteria. Instead this lecturer proposed the use of a standardized survey for data collection. He specifically named the AttrakDiff questionnaire, an open source web based questionnaire developed to assess the hedonic and pragmatic criteria in a user experience (AttrakDiff, N.A.). In contrast to our tool, this survey uses descriptive words instead of numerical ratings by asking users to rate an experience from one word (e.g. Simple) to another (e.g. Complicated). Using such a digital survey would have the added benefit of being able to compile and analyse large amounts of data digitally. In addition, such a tool would ensure the data would be collected using a tool recognized by academics and designers alike.

In this regard, the team believes the best approach would be to collect quantitative data using the AttrakDiff questionnaire and qualitative data through interviews. This quantitative data could be used to fill in a rating and the qualitative data could be used to shed more light into why such a rating was given. Once this data has been collected, the team’s evaluation tool can be used to gather of all the results, quantitative and qualitative alike. Both the feedback from design practitioners and experience of using the tool indicated that the main value of this tool is this ability to quickly and clearly get an overview of the important heuristics for user experience. In addition the team also seemed to help facilitate discussions within the design team about relevant issues.

LimitationsIt should be noted that the timeframe used for developing this user experience evaluation tool was very limited. Consequently, the tool was not extensively tested. If this project was to move forward the team’s recommendation is to use the insights gathered thus far and create a new iteration of the tool. Following this step, the team recommends that the tool be tested with a variety of different designers and in a variety of different projects. This would ensure that the tool is effective across different design projects. For now there is no specified context or time within the design process for the use of the tool, this is left open to the user. To optimize the effectiveness of the tool it should be defined when in the design process the tool should be used.

IX. concLUSIonS

The goal of this report was to document the design and

learning process for developing a UX-tool which can evaluate everyday experiences on a pragmatic and hedonic level. Both of these aspects are implemented in the final tool. We can conclude that when an experience has good usability and provides personal meaning to the user, it can be considered to be a well designed experience. A balancing aspect between the hedonic and pragmatic are of importance for the quality of the experience (Hassenzahl, 2010). This is supported by the conclusion from the user evaluation. Every single experience is characterized by subjective and situated aspects. Therefore it is quite difficult to exactly reproduce the experience. We found out that a research-through-design approach opens the possibility to identify the key elements to stimulate the emergence of a particular experience, by developing the concept of the ‘Gamified-Bin’. The heuristics formulated in this report were quite challenging to come up with. Based on Montazeri et al.’s (2013) heuristics can be seen as reasoning processes that could potentially offer a solution to a problem by providing cognitive processing shortcuts, while making arbitrary judgments, but that do not guarantee the achievement of the absolute best solution. Therefore the formulated heuristics in this report should merely be seen as guidelines to evaluate the emergence of an experience through the use of a product, system or service. As mentioned before in the discussion section, the timeframe used for developing this user experience evaluation tool was rather short, and therefore not extensively tested. We can conclude that more research on the effectiveness of the final tool is needed before proper implementation.

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• Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In Action control (pp. 11-39). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

• Armstrong, I. (2017). A new framework for UX Heuristics. https://uxplanet.org/a-new-framework-for-ux-heuristics-71ef722865b3

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• Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self‐determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational behavior, 26(4), 331-362.

• Hassenzahl, M. (1999). AttrakDiff. Ludwigsburg: uid. Retrieved from http://www.attrakdiff.de/index-en.html

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• Kahneman, D. & Miller, D. T. (2002). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. In T.D.Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases. The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 348–366). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Interaction Design Foundation. (N.D.): What is Usability? Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/usability

• Lithium Technologies Inc. (2016). The Gamification Spectrum (white paper). http://pages.lithium.com/gamification-spectrum.html

• IDEO U (N.D.). Effective Brainstorming Techniques. Retrieved from: www.ideou.com/pages/brainstorming.

• Montazeri, S., Finkbiner, D., Papalambros, P., & Gonzalez, R. (2013). Save a napkin, save a tree: The role of metaphors in product design to change behavior. In DS 75-7: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED13), Design for Harmonies, Vol. 7: Human Behaviour in Design, Seoul, Korea, 19-22.08. 2013.

• Morschheuser, B., Hamari, J., & Koivisto, J. (2016). Gamification in Crowdsourcing: A Review (pp. 4375– 4384). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.543

• Neeli, B. K. (2012). A Method to Engage Employees Using Gamification in BPO Industry (pp. 142–146). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSEM.2012.27

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• Schwartz B. et al (2002): Maximizing vs Satisficing: Happiness is a Matter of Choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 8 (5), 1178 - 1197. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86.2448&rep=rep1&type=pdf

• Scott, J. (2000). Rational choice theory. Understanding contemporary society: Theories of the present, 129.

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• Smart, P. (2015) 50 Design Problems In 50 Days: Real Empathy For Innovation (Part 1). Smashing Magazine. 22-09-2013.

• Thompson, M., & Oelker, A. (2013). Use of participant-generated photographs versus time use diaries as a method of qualitative data collection. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 12(1), 624-637, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/160940691301200133

references

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STATEMENTSPlease note that in this report the sections ‘Introduction’, ‘Scientific background’, ‘Design’

and ‘Quality of report’ have been revised substantially from the intermediate report.

In our group everyone was highly committed and there were no discrepancies in the commitment and effort spent by different members in our team. The collaboration went

well.

Appendices

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Appendix I

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Appendix II

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Appendix III

concept board

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Appendix Iv

Heuristics Expectations

Usability:

• Flow of information within the design matches to the user task flow.

• The design provides clear and immediate information about the task at hand and easy access to frequently needed information.

• Expository information is minimal (no choice overload). Some choices should still be available (based on relevancy).

• (eventually) The design is easy understandable / no extra information needed for use.

• Connections between elements are clearly apparent (easy to know what influences what, and with that know what happens and why)

• Consistent and clear terminology

Besides ‘good’ usability a UX experience should also fulfill at least some of the need-satisfaction items (based on human needs) according to Sheldon (2001) (pleasure will automatically follow) and it always needs to fulfil the first.

1. User feels related to the cause / task and should want to contribute to the cause / task.

2. Cater the individual as well as a group (if designed for a social space)

3. The user is able to make their own choices and does not feel forced to do something (merely be guided to do something)

4. Have or support flow, competence of the user and what he is asked to do match in level of difficulty.

5. User feels confident or feels somewhat competent in what he does.

6. User feels positively reinforced to perform the task again / regularly

7. User feels as if he personally positively contributed to the change in attitude / skills / knowledge of other people. Or other people support him because of his choices.

8. The possibility to integrate the task into the users set of routines and habits (as it is structured). (Describe some barriers for integration)

9. User feels safe from failure / real world consequences.

Utility:

Human needs, relevance

Why are we doing this?

Saving the world / earth

Usefulness:

Learning how to recycle.

Throwing away trash and sorting it for recycling.

Improving the current situation 1) for people that already want to recycle* 2) for the university that wants people to recycle**.

*Because it is not an option (yet) in La Place to recycle.

**In other TU/e buildings the trash is often not sorted right.

The use of the product is two fold. Firstly, it is used to help people throw away and sort through their trash for recycling purposes. This is particularly important in our University, because recycling is not always an option in our canteens and because canteens sell a large amount of single use products that can be recycled. The second function of this product is of a pedagogic nature. The bin teaches people how to sort their trash through a trial and error approach and through the use of encouraging feedback.

Usability

In order to make recycling easier, we divided the decision making process into a series of binary decision. Like in a buffet, users walk along a counter where they are presented with one yes or no “questions” at a time (e.g. do you have paper cups?). This is aimed at reducing the cognitive load of the user during interactions.

To facilitate decision making the system will reassure that the user has made the correct choice by lighting up their item green. On the other hand if the user tries to throw away an item in the incorrect bin the system will be shine a red light on the item.

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For the purpose of this project we focused on the interaction between the product and its regular users, meaning the people disposing of trash. This means that how cleaning staff interacts with the product is not within the scope of our project.

Social context - Considering the product will be used in to context of a university canteen, it is safe to assume that the user will at times be accompanied by friends or colleagues. This could have implications on the usability of the product (e.g. can the user keep a conversation while sorting the trash) and the behaviour of the user (e.g. will the social context influence the user’s decisions). On the other hand, it could enhance a collective effort to share knowledge about recycling options (e.g. “do you know where this goes?”).

We designed the group motivation board to get people to talk about recycling and placed it high so it could be seen from afar. Besides getting people to talk, the board should create relevance (see more in relatedness).

There can be several GIFs at once, they ‘follow’ you around. Multiple user interaction isn’t interfering with personal interaction.

The design might be drawing so much attention that people’s normal conversations are interrupted while recycling? which could, in the long term, be annoying or unwanted.

Autonomy: Learning by doing is the chosen approach to teach people how to recycle their trash by themselves. This way, the user won’t just be doing it at the university because “he has to” but also at home, in his private environment, because he gets familiar to the system. → building new mental infrastructures could take some initial effort but, as soon as it gets a habituated action, it will become an effortless practice of everyday life.

The lights showing if you are doing it wrong before you do it might make the design less autonomous, is it still autonomous enough?

The beeping sound might be so much pressure that the design doesn’t feel autonomous anymore.

Competence: Being able to separate your trash in the most sustainable way.

The concept is a way of learning to separate trash in which you can become better at. Feeling like it’s important to do it for yourself and for others.

The design is also showing your personal and communities competence with green lights, and with the group motivation board (progress).

Competence is rewarded by GIF’s which stimulates the feeling of having accomplished something. When a user already can recycle well the group motivations / progress replaces the this function to help users feel as if they accomplished something.

Relatedness: knowing how good the rest of the department / university is doing in terms of sustainability → peer pressure?

Knowing the user himself contributes to a cause that is related to him (using metaphors).

Maybe peer pressure / other people (at the university these are often friends) recycling together with the user makes them feel more related to the cause?

Stimulation:

Implementing fun in the concept through rewards on a short-term level in

the forms of .GIFS and long-term level in the form of group motivation. Curiosity plays a role as the kind of .GIF a person receive is different each time and has a surprising element to it.

The different GIFs might keep it interesting for people in the long run as they can work as a motivator each day to continue schoolwork after lunch.

The beep sound might work negatively? To annoy others on purpose?

Popularity: comparing your (good) actions to fellow students, being on top of the

“recycling masterclass”. The concept can lead to a certain recognition about your

faculty performance from others.

Recycling is seen as a good thing (savior of the world) so a

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person might use it for personal status purposes (I recycle well so I’m a good person).

The motivation board shows that the user is helping / contributing which might be a positive influence as users are recognized for their good behavior.

Security: being assured that everything is where it’s supposed to go and that will be taken care to produce less waste → assuring the user that his/her actions won’t be for nothing but for a good cause (breaking down myths about recycling?)

The lights showing in advance if the user uses the bins correctly stimulates a sense of security (you cannot do it wrong if you don’t want to).

The binary-choices order of the bins and the routine in throwing away trash might help with feeling secure.

Beeping might be too much (especially the first time) and the user might not come back to recycle at all because he feels insecure.

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User Evaluation data download

Participant 1

“Usually I’m not using the tray, because only buying single items” (it’s too expensive to eat here a full meal, maybe just a soup from time to time). “Usually I bring my own food in a [tupperware] box.”

If I was sitting here I would normally go there (points at bin at the rear end of the cafetaria). → the choice is motivated by proximity

Never eaten in other campus canteens, just having coffee

→ once, at the chemistry building (they have the same settings)

At home I would get rid of the waste while cooking

Maybe if eating sweets, that would be packed, otherwise I never have this amount of waste (e.g. never use napkins at home)

If you’re in a group, one person picks up all the waste for everybody and throws it away → it’s nice

When I was studying in Germany we used to have convection belts for the trays and sometimes they would get stuck because people leave all their waste on it

I don’t think much happens, you don’t pay too much attention to it (when you’re in a conversation and go to throw away waste) but that’s also because there’s no separation, you just throw everything together. So here I don’t separate because waste containers don’t offer anything else. But if I was at my parents I would separate them.

About the storyboard:

I think it’s nice that you can pass by and sort out everything.

Bu tI think for some people it’s hard to know what’s, for example, paper. I honestly don’t identify what goes where. I would put this, because I think it’s recyclable, but there isn’t anything that says metal.

If your mechanism would actually identify exactly what I’m putting in, I guess that works!

Putting away trash:

You really have to think about where to put everything which is on your tray. Also, because it is a lot of waste.

I really like this (cup sizes) because it really reflects the cups we have here so it’s pretty clear where this [soup cup] should go. I think it’s pretty clear. The only thing I am not sure is Tetrapack, because in some places they say you should

I’m wondering if you get used to that after a while, maybe you can already kind of sort it on your tray to make the process faster. That would help in places where there’s a lot of people eating at the same time (here it’s not a big problem).

It’s quite a lot, maybe one separation less would help. Maybe you could combine cups and plastics.

Stuff like this [metal foil], I don’t know what to do with it. Common packaging stuff, that you always find in this canteen, it would be useful to know where it’s supposed to go.

What is really clear is the color coding, it’s an easy association (if you have done that before). Also, the color coding of the lights it’s pretty easy to associate with the positive/negative feedback. Also the infographics helps as a motivation. I want to recycle but for me the question is what happens afterwards. Because what I’ve recently found out is that the plastic which is supposed to be recycled (in my hometown) gets burned instead of recycled.

Doing this takes effort, you take time to separate it so I would like to know what they [e.g. cups] turn into or where they’re going afterwards.

Some people are always reluctant to make an effort, so if they see friends doing it it could motivate them in making this effort to because they don’t want to be the ones who don’t [between people who do care].

It depends how loud is the feedback, if everybody can hear I made it wrong then I would feel forced to recycle.

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But I think that really can help to actually educate people. Maybe you also learn from what other people put in there, e.g. what you can see it’s already in there. But maybe by yourself you’re not always sure about where do things go.

I’ve grown up doing that so I feel confident to recycle. But in every city, country you have different kinds of recycling systems so I’m not always sure where does this kind of things (metal) goes.

Positive change in attitude is possible.

Would this be a design integratable into everyday life for people who don’t know anything about recycling? I think it’s definitely easier when you already know and have the habit of recycling, but I guess it gives people an opportunity to learn and you can always ask people around you. But also if you have auditory feedback then you learn when you make it wrong or right.

When I know already I’m going there with several people (and I know the system) I would already sort it [trash] out on the tray so I can just take this whole bunch of stuff and throw it away together (in the right bin).

If I really have to run somewhere I would just stuff it all together in the “other trash”. I already find it confusing when people put their whole trash in the paper recycling bin. I would be willing to sort it but then, I don’t care anymore if no one else does it.

What if the scoreboard tells you it’s going really bad? But when it’s already filled with mixed trash, does it make a difference if I put it in the correct bin?

If the scoreboard is really high, maybe that would be motivating. Or it’s a good starter for identifying it as a problem.

I think this is definitely better than what we have so far. Because I think recycling it’s important. Right now I don’t care because I don’t have the option. But I do care about the environment so I would be willing to set myself as an example.

Maybe you could provide info on the tray, to already pre-sort it.

Participant 2 & 3

2: I probably would eat that [croissant]. I never leave food.

3: Me neither.

2: I might taking that to my place [plastic fork] but I stopped that.

3: yeah me too. I did that once, tried washing that but it broke. They should be reusable but they’re not.

2: exactly, they’re not reusable as they should.

How does it work at home?

2: I usually put my dirty dishes on my fridge, but there is no real garbage when I eat. I just throw that immediately while I’m cooking in the general trash (we just have one). Actually I also have two bins in my room but I just also throw them away in the multipurpose garbage. Yeah...shit. We actually separate glass and cardboard. It doesn’t look like a bin, it’s just a big cardboard box.

3: I would take my bowl, put it next to the sink and just go back to work.

3: I try to sort plastic and glass but I have like a ton under a table.

2: I think in any other building they already have sorted out bins, then I do sort my trash out. But not in this building.

3: yeah, if I had the choice I would also separate. But I don’t have the choice here.

2: you always have the choice, man. You could walk 100 m there

3: Yeah, well... I want to have an easy choice

2: no, it doesn’t affect the process.

3: no, but I tried and being a bit distracted made me throw away things in the wrong whole. Also if you don’t really know where something should go in that state, e.g. dirty paper cup. I don’t know what the rules are here

2: that actually happens a lot, asking yourself “can that go in here” and then you don’t want to waste too much time so you might throw it away in the wrong one

3: I spend less than a second in deciding where it goes, so it happened that I also did it wrong at my workplace for a really long time until I found out the info on the bin was ambiguous.

2: I have to say I don’t think it has an affect on me to be in a hurry not to separate. I never were so much in a hurry

3: it’s just not prioritizing thinking about it against having to go, so I just instinctively throw it somewhere I think it’s right

2: usually you can always ask people, have a conversation about it

3: it’s annoying because there’s always different rules about it

2: yeah, but in the campus people know

3: I don’t even know how often I throw things away (separately)

2: I’m not so often in those kind of spaces where you have to separate

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2: I try to keep materials that are not dirty to put them in a box where I keep materials I might use (to explore), e.g. metallic parts, packaging papers (it has a nice structure) because it’s not something that you have at home otherwise

3: I also save ziplock bags a lot to separate electronics

2: yeah, me too! Also, the glass containers from supermarkets I always keep to have glasses at home. It’s more like reuse than recycling.

3: sometimes cardboard boxes are reused, to store stuff

2: yeah, true

2: I normally do it myself, because I want to be in control of what I’m doing. But yeah I can also let a friend do it.

3: so now I’m making lots of choices.

First impressions

2: holy shit, everything is gonna become sensorized

3: I thought it’s gonna give me a lot of pressure to be correct. Because there’s gonna be lots of people and if this one beeps I’m gonna feel really stupid so I would just trash it all together in “other”.

What about the whole info?

2: I think in terms of flow it’s the easiest to start with the cups, because you see all the sizes and it’s immediate to see where this [cup] fits.

3: I think it’s fairly clear. It looks like a lot of choices.

2: I think there’s a lot of situations where there’s multiple materials in a packaging so you might not know what to do.

3: the feedback would actually help to know, does this go in here? No. alright.

2: would be interesting to know more, to have some examples on why

2: also, there’s not really a place where you can get rid of fluids if, for example, you don’t finish your coffee or your soup and you need to throw away the container…

2: I think the info is clear but I would choose something more “stylish” with different colors, e.g., but then it might not be easy to understand haha but I always have this idea that I just really don’t know how it works. Just putting it in the right box doesn’t really make me feel like I made a different

3: also, I’m not gonna recycle more in other situations just because I have to do it here. If I recycle here, it’s not gonna make a difference in what I do at home

3: we can have a discussion about it when I don’t know where to put my biodegradable fork

2: I don’t think it takes much longer, just when you really want to start a discussion on why something goes there and why not the other way. Or generally about recycling differences in between countries.

3: there’s just a bit more public exposure here in feeling stupid when making it wrong and everybody sees it and what do you do? Stick your hand in and pick it back?

2: what happens when you actually try to put your hands in (to pick something back because it was wrong)? You should maybe be able to detect it and put a huge smiley (because you’re taking it back maybe)

2: It wouldn’t teach me too much when it’s just a light feedback.

3: maybe I would just be annoyed when I can’t do it right at the first try.

3: If I do it right in the first try yes [I would feel confident], if I do it wrong, no. I would feel less confident with this feedback.

2: if you throw something in and then there’s a red light and sound then maybe

2: what if you’re not good at it, would you keep not recycling?

3: if really every time I try there’s red lights and beeping I would just not eat here anymore and throw my trash somewhere else haha

2: I wouldn’t really care about the count of trashed items, because it could also go the other way around. I don’t think that trashing a lot is a good thing, because it’s still a lot of trash. It shows that you guys buy really shit packed stuff

3: but then, again, that’s what you can buy here…

2: yes, I could integrate it in my routine

3: yeah, because it’s there…

3: only if I don’t fail…

2: but you won’t fail, man! You can maybe fail when

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you’re really in a rush but I think you’re just gonna make it right after the first try.

3: I’m not going to change my statement!

2: actually, I think, when I was really really in a hurry… then, I would probably just not have lunch, or if I do I would just put this whole tray (full of stuff) on top, and leave. But only when it’s this much.

3: I would just throw everything in “other” and then run. Or, if I’m eating with other people, just leave it with them and leave

Would you take the initiative to separate for others?

3:only in a day when I feel like I have a lot to give, because things are going great.

2: depends on how much it is, how dirty it is, how busy you are…

When the bin is already mixed…

3: I was sorting things for a long time in mixed bins, but after a year that I’ve seen it is every kinds of shit inside, I stopped caring

2: since I saw everyone throw everything in it, I also don’t care about sorting paper… but here I would still do it, sort all the things I have

3: how do I know what’s compared to? Imagining i’ve seen other canteens

2: i would think really bad about this building… it’s not really your fault how much your faculty is trashing, it’s about what shit they sell here.

3: I wouldn’t feel so connected to this because I don’t have such a strong faculty feeling that I would take it upon me to be better than others

3: I think it’s a clear improvement to have a light here that tells you whether you’re doing it right or wrong. Without any leaderboards nor .gif’s, just that would already be an improvement

3: I see this as just those trash cans with lights in.

Participant 4

I wouldn’t find any other bin than that one, so I can’t separate. But I usually would because I’m used to that.

We separate drink cartons, metal, plastics, organics and general waste.

Do you see a difference when you’re in a group or alone?

No. usually I just pick all the trash they also have with me. So it doesn’t really interfere any conversation.

Usually I wrap my bread in aluminium foil and then I have a plastic bag where to keep other food, like fruits.

We had a same kind of idea for a recycling project we did. I really like the concept with the light but maybe the GIF if it has sound could be very distracting. If you neighbor has a .gif then I could get distracted from my separation

The sounds could be annoying, because lots of people don’t really know where does trash goes (separately).

But if the bin detects what you’re doing and gives you light feedback, then you don’t really need the beeping…

Even if i’m used to it it’s still a bit difficult because there’s products that have mixed materials, so I don’t know if it should go in plastics or… I don’t know

Info presentation

I think it’s convenient but e.,g. I didn’t really notice the cups separation from the rest. The plastic thing it confuses me a little bit because usually (home) you can put more materials in it.

I can imagine that for people who don’t really recycle it would be a bit too much choice

The beeping is definitely a clear “wrong” message and the GIF could be a nice reward

Yeah, makes me want to contribute. I miss this here.

I think you would think about why you would and need to do it

Because there’s so many option, I would feel a little bit (not so much) forced. I’d get nervous on where to put things

It makes me feel confident because of the different categories that you can separate everything

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I think I am confident about it because it’s pretty clear. Because of the light feedback, i don’t think I would do it wrong (i hope)

Positive reinforced in doing it again? Yeah, why not?

Would it contribute to others’ attitude? Yeah, others would do it too. I think if the person next to you does it for the first time you can always help.

My brother doesn’t like to recycle. He’s very lazy, so I think he would just put it in “other” because it’s too many options and he wouldn’t really care about it.

When in a hurry it wouldn’t be much more difficult because I would think about where to put it beforehand.

When it’s mixed… I would still put my stuff in if it has to be there but i would worry about the recycling process. But i wouldn’t pick up what others did wrong

I would try to recycle even more things to catch up the score, like stuff from other people. It’s a new thing so you can talk about it and maybe more people would look at it

I would prefer this design to know where, e.g. cups should go.

Participant 5 & 6

Current routine

5: I threw it all in one bin

6: Me too. I didn’t even notice, I just threw it all. I think I had one bottle

5: I had a bit of cardboard from here and the remains of a pear.

Last time in a building where recycling bins are installed

6: I kinda like that. It makes me more aware of what kind of junk I have in my tray . But here is just one hole and you kind of have to deal with it. It doesn’t make you

5: you don’t know where they are and they’re all separated so some people just throw it all in the closest one

6: the colors are a bit ambiguous because they also change that quite often. Some people think blue is paper when it’s actually not.

At home

6: we recycle plastics and paper and organic as much as possible

5: we only have paper, glass and the rest is all together

because in our neighborhood there’s no other recycling bin

6: our street is very supportive in terms of containers

Is it different when eating alone vs. company?

6: for me it’s not the case if i’m with someone or not, it’s more the case that there’s not the possibility to separate in site, not that I have to carry it somewhere else

5: for me it’s mainly about convenience, if it’s convenient

6: it should be designed in terms of a clear sorting and also convenient in terms of proximity to where you eat.

Is time a factor?

6: no, not really. If i had a choice i would always take the time

5: if it’s within 30 sec it’s okay, but i wouldn’t go to the other side of the building to throw my leftover (trash)

Other chances for recycling?

6: i’m sometimes going to the scrappy [dumpster]. People are doing that when you’re moving, for example. Or if you have some home appliances or more heavier stuff to get rid of.

5: what you didn’t mention is batteries but it’s the same.

5: for me it’s really important to know if it’s effective enough. Meaning, if the end result of separating is really something positive

First impressions

5: we missed these [cups in paper]

6: that’s confusing for me (when there’s organic in the “other”) so maybe if you move this further away…

5: yeah, but then people just walk to that one [other]

6: maybe you should redefine “non-recyclable materials” because other could mean anything…

5: in a way this isn’t really that different from the ones in metaforum. But because it’s so spread out it’s maybe too much to really look at everything, so maybe they should be closer to eat other. And having a really motivating animation like a cheering stadium when you hit it right.

5: for me this [the cups separation] is a bit confusing because I would always put it in paper

6: me too, I always put cups in the paper bin

25

So, is it too many options?

6: some

5: i didn’t really mean they’re too many but you cannot really see them all together at one glance so they should just be closer together.

6: and really make them in a better scale like from fully recyclable to not at all, left to right

6: it’s kind of similar to ones i’ve seen before and i liked those because they’re really compact and that’s maybe what I miss here, the control over a lot of holes

5: we didn’t really have the whole experience, like with sound and lights and movement, it’s something never seen before within a trash system, so that’s something new for sure

6: i would really like to have this, only this one [“other”] really bothers me

Participant 7 & 8

7: Throw it all away except for the knife and the tray. In the trash can. There is only one bin so I would throw it all together.

8: The paper bins in the office space are always full of other trash.

7:Mainly I throw away cups or organic stuff in the other recycling bins.

8: When I see a recycling bin and it is nicely sorted I recycle the trash.

7: I live in a house with 9 other people so it is difficult. We tried doing it for plastic for a while but it didn’t work.

8: I only separate plastic because I can’t separate organic in my house.

8: No difference between with friends and without.

7: In a hurry – If it is really really messy and I would get dirty than I would maybe not do it. But it is not difficult so I would always try to do it.

[presented concept]

7: I think it is nice to have some feedback. Because sometimes I’m not sure on where to throw it.

8: It is nice to see the board and how it changes as you contribute by recycling.

7: The gifs are maybe not necessary.

8: I think it can be a little busy if everyone is throwing away the trash.

[sorting trash]

8: With organic I had some doubts.

7: I didn’t really look at the icons. I focused more in the colors, the words and the wholes.

8: Sometimes they also have information on what can go in. I think maybe that could be useful. For example paper can be plastified and then is not recyclable.

7: Ye, it is easy to understand.

7: I think the beeping would be nice with the colors.

7: ye but it might get annoying.

7: [relate to the cause] I guess so.

8: I have a little problem of organization, so it is nice to have it all sorted and it also shows how much you use.

7: [relating to the board] It would be nice.

7: It would have to relative the amount of people. But it would be a nice way to encourage people. And it would be fun if the metaphors would change.

[autonomy]

7: You are quite forced.

8: The ‘other’ whole is way smaller than the current trash, so it is way harder to throw everything in.

[ease of use]

26

8: I think after the first time use, it will clear some doubts.

7: If it was available I would use it. But if another trash can is closer I might use that instead.

8: Another thing might be that people can be ashamed of admitting they don’t know where something goes. So they might avoid the trash can and the beeps.

7: In the beginning I only used the paper bins in the office for paper, but then you see other people using it for everything and it seems like they don’t recycle it.

8: In my old university you saw the cleaning lady putting all the trash together and then you think that it is pointless to recycle.

8: If you see that other people don’t care at all you also stop caring.

7: There are many bins but if you use it more often than you already know what goes where.

7: [if the score is low]I think what is more important is that you see your contribution.

8: It would be nice to have space for the tray, so it is more convenient to sort the trash.

7: The current trash can is super convenient but it would feel better to recycle.

8: I think the same. I was very surprised that here they don’t have any recycling.

8: Some containers I don’t even know what they are for. I know one is for paper, in the other one I always throw MDF but i’m not sure if it is right. And the other one is for the rest.

7: I think we already mentioned what can be improved. You could probably skip the gifs.

8: Im not sure about the public blaming . It could also be nice. It there was an order like in the canteen. But then I would start with plastic.

7: I would start with cups.

8: Either way it would be nice to have a line.

8: An added value is that you would raise awareness.

7: What I really like is the color indication so you know that you have the right bin. And it is also nice to see the contribution.

Participant 9

Take it to the trash and clean the tray. Normally I use the one next to the entrance in the canteen. There is only one bag, so I throw everything in one place.

I realized that when I go to spar in the supermarket and in Luna there is a recycling can so I use that.

I like to recycle otherwise I feel like it is a bit of a waste. And in university you eat a lot of snacks that have a lot of packaging. So, I try to recycle, but I have the feeling that the university just throws everything in the same place.

It depends on the facilities but I try to recycle independently of I’m eating with others or not.

It is very fast so I also do it when I am in a hurry. But sometimes I don’t know if I can recycle.

At home it is super difficult. In my neighbourhood you need to check which day of the week they come. And I have too much to do to find out the date. In Spain I recycle but here not and I am not very proud of it.

When I was living in campus they had the facilities and then I recycled. But here they don’t have it, but at my new house I need to check the days of the week so now I don’t do it.

[presenting concept]

I think the light feedback is really nice. Because sometime you doubt whether or not you are doing it right

I don’t know if the gif is too much. I think the board on top is already a nice encouragement. But that is a personal preference.

[after using the prototype]

It was a lot of information, I don’t know if the cup section needs to be like this. It is nice because it is clear that it is not paper.

The paper section could just be a line, without the round shape. So that you can’t fit a cup.

The colors help. I didn’t look a lot at the icons. I looked at the colors, the text and the wholes. By the way green in my country is glass, organic is brown.

You could play with the size of the cans in 3d so it is more understandable. As is it is a lot of information in just one layer.

The terminology is clear.

I normally want to contribute to the cause, so I don’t know. It would be nice if they implement it in Laplace because I can’t recycle.

The board is also nice to see how you contribute and it would be a nice topic of conversation during lunch. If it would change every month you would keep it interesting.

I think it is quite strict because if you don’t act well you get punished. I think it is nice to kind of force people, but

27

it can be embarrassing if you get it wrong.

There might be some situations when you can’t do it right and then you will get punished. For example when it is full.

The light is really useful. Because they say if you recycle wrong you are really making a mess for the people recycling the trash later on.

Yes it makes me feel more competent.

I think only by having a small can for ‘other’ already says you should sort it out. And having the board there makes you see how you are contributing.

The same way you sort out the cutlery and the dishes you can also sort out the waste.

If you get the red light you don’t put it there. It is clear. Maybe your friends also help you.

I think this way you can actually sort out the trash [unlike the current solution]

It would be nice if in the table before getting up you could already sort it with your friends. So when you are done with your coffee you might already put the cup on top of the other empty cup.

I think when you are used to it it will be faster. But yes I would feel really bad if I am in hurry and have to throw everything in the ‘other’. But I don’t think this would happen very often.

It is not too nice to see the wrong trash in the wrong compartment. I would still do it right but I would lose a bit of confidence and would think the score board would be less accurate.

It would be nice if the trash would know that it is not correct and would only count the correct trash.

I prefer this one because then I can recycle but the other one is faster for sure. Aslo the way of throwing away the trash is a bit more fun. But yes I prefer this one.

I think one improvement would be to make it a bit more of a 3d product. For example in spain, the plastic compartment has different wholes and shapes than the paper waste can. This could be a nice way to distinguish the different compartments.

I think it would be nice without the gif. Just with the light and the scoreboard. I also think if they change the way we buy stuff then it would be more effective. For example the soup bowls could be ceramic bowls.

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Appendix v

User experience evaluation tool

UX

go

od

HE

DO

NIC

why

PRA

GM

ATIC

what &

how

How

is the user’s motivation

influenced throughout the

experience (by means of

creating meaning through

the feeling of competence

and flow)?

How

is the user’s motivation

influenced throughout the

experience (by means of

creating meaning through

relatedness to the user?

Ho

w is the user’s m

otivatio

n infl

uenced thro

ugho

ut the exp

erience (by m

eans of

creating m

eaning thro

ugh

safety from

failure or

real wo

rld co

nsequences)?

Ho

w is the user’s m

otivatio

n infl

uenced thro

ugho

ut the exp

erience (by m

eans of

creating m

eaning thro

ugh the

supp

ort o

f autono

mo

us choices)?

Ho

w is the user’s m

otivatio

n infl

uenced thro

ugho

ut the exp

erience (by m

eans of

creating m

eaning thro

ugh

feeling o

f com

munity)?

What is the initial m

otivatio

n o

f the user? And

of w

hat kind?

(intrinsic, extrinsic etc.)

CLE

AR

TO U

ND

ER

STAN

Dco

nsistentclear term

inolo

gy

clear terms

CO

NV

EN

IEN

CE

requires an ad

equate am

ount o

f time

requires an ad

equate am

ount o

f e�o

rt

requires ad

adeq

uate amo

unt of m

oney

easily accessible

INFO

RMATIO

N

conciserelevant

understandable

RELIABILITY

bugs free

positive / predictable

outcomes

CA

LMN

ESS

keeps in the p

eriphery

(until interaction is need

ed)

supp

orts m

ultiple users

(conscio

usly desig

ned)

unob

trusive (in so

cial contexts)

RE

SPO

NSIV

Eclear feed

back

po

sitive feedb

ackim

med

iate feedb

acklo

cation relevant

USE

FULN

ESS

What kind

of value is p

rovided

?

(How

) Can the p

rob

lem —

that users mig

ht not b

e aware o

f but d

o exp

erience— b

e solved

with current m

eans? (H

ow

) Can the situatio

n be im

proved

by current m

eans?

29

Poster and Evaluation tool in use.

30

Appendix vI

Personal reflection by Giulia caleca

g.caleca@student.tue.nls163343 / 1033557

As designers, I believe that we have the social, moral and ethical responsibility to enhance the experience of everyday life in a sustainable way, meaning as much for the environment as for the humans that interact with technological products, systems and services. In order to be able to achieve that, we need to acknowledge the users as sentient beings: often acting on the basis of (often, unsustainable) unconscious habits, routines and behaviors but, still, thinking and feeling beings. For this reasons, we need to be able to understand not only what and how we interact with our everyday environments but, most importantly, why. This course gave me the most important theoretical background on understanding the user experience as well as the basis for action possibilities in the perspective of how to enhance the emergence of a specific moment of bliss, a particular experience, within the continuum of the everyday life, called the experiencing. I think it is necessary to rethink the concept of “use” in design as not only related to ease of use and utility of a product, but also in relation to the possibilities of enabling a critical reflection through their usage (Backlund et al., 2006) as well as participating in creating a story of humans and products interactions.

I believe that the tool I created together with the team could practically help designers in bridging this gap in the analysis of user experiences. I think more time could have been dedicated to better focus on developing the mentioned tool, rather than devoting only the last hectic week of the course. If we had more time, I would suggest further evaluations of the tool to, perhaps, have a more insights and helpful feedback to develop a more complete toolkit.

rEfErEncES

Backlund, S., Gyllenswärd, M., Gustafsson, A., Ilstedt Hjelm, S., Mazé, R., & Redström, J. (2006). Static! The aesthetics of energy in everyday things. In Proceedings of Design Research Society Wonderground International Conference 2006.

Appendix vII

Personal reflection by Miguel cabral Guerra

m.cabral.guerra@student.tue.nlS150115

Prior to this class I had done many user tests to assess products and services. I applied the correct tools and methods but to this day I knew very little about what makes a good user experience. This class was the first time I had the chance to really dive deep into the theory behind what makes a good user experience through lectures and literature. In addition this class was a good opportunity to design of a concept based on both user insights as well as theory. This was useful in further cementing this knowledge through practice. Furthermore I think that by testing the concept with end users we were able to evaluate our process and outcome. Lastly I think that by creating the UX ToolKit the team was forced to once again draw our own conclusion about what makes a good user experience, which lead to healthy debates on the topic and mutual learning.

In retrospect I think the timeframe for all the activities was quite short and didn’t allow us to devote as much time to developing the design concept and UX Toolkit as I would have liked. That being said I think the team worked very hard and was able to divide the workload in a fair way.

For me the biggest value of taking this class was to get a better grip on theoretical models that could in the future help me design user experiences. In addition, this elective extended the amount of methods and tools I can now use for user research prior to and following the design process. Since the beginning of the class I have already had the chance to put some of this knowledge into practice during my final masters project.

31

Appendix vIII

Personal reflection by Michelle van Lieshout

m.p.c.v.lieshout@student.tue.nls125260

I chose to follow this course to learn about designing a good user experience. I was curious about evaluating an experience rather than a product because I believe this to be more useful within my FMP than the previous (as I have assessed products and services before, both qualitatively and quantitatively). Throughout the project I learned what is important during the user experience, to apply this and to design for the evaluation of this through critical team discussions and in class discussions. The tool that we developed conveys my insights about a good user experience and I will gladly use this in future projects to asses the user experience, along with validated research to support my conclusions.

During the course I found it quite hard to deal with the confusion around the various steps in the design process (because it was unclear what the end result should convey). An example is the heuristics, in the first place we misunderstood what these were about (and that we had to come up with them rather than fill out and adjust existing ones). But after feedback we were able to write better heuristics. In retrospect this was a very good event, considering the heuristics. Due to the confusion our heuristics went through several iterations. And by filling them out concerning our own concept we were able to compare the expected situation to the actual situation more objectively, (Since according to psychological theories people have difficulty relating back to their old opinions when new ones have formed) and adjust them for the better. In the future I therefore think this iterative process and the comparing real situations to expected situations is important when coming up with evaluation criteria and not only when evaluating a concept. Nevertheless I do prefer a clearer end goal to work towards; this means that I need to plan these iterations of the criteria, as they will not come naturally. I also learned that a good every day life user experience (blending in with the other experiences) needs to be evaluated differently from a one time only - memorable good user experience, which is more in line with my interests. But the two also have many elements in common.

Appendix IX

Personal reflection by Jelle-Jan de Groot

j.j.a.d.groot@student.tue.nlS163577

By following the course ‘User Experience: Theory & Practice’, I gained new knowledge and skills in the many facets for designing and evaluating user experiences. This will contribute to me as a designer who wants to contribute to my vision of designing everyday intelligent products and services which improves the quality of people’s lives. As Hassenzahl also states: ‘An experience is an episode, a chunk of time that one went through---with sights and sounds, feelings and thoughts, motives and actions; they are closely knitted together, stored in memory, labelled, relived and communicated to others’. I gained a deeper understanding of these subjective aspects by reading and discussing related literature about user experience, empathy and the connection with the fabric of everyday life and its daily choices.

These activities during the course made me feel more knowledgeable to design and especially evaluate user experience. On the evaluation aspect of user experience, there are not many heuristics available (yet), and the challenge to come up with heuristics for user experience ourselves challenged us to put our knowledge and insights into rules of thumb for evaluation. This was fun as challenging because our practice, developing heuristics, was based only on related literature and using design evaluation methods for a specifically chosen case ourselves (co-constructing stories method). The theoretical background also supported the group in developing a tool for evaluating user experience. This tool I will definitely use in future projects where I want to gain a deeper understanding of the many facets and aspects of the experience of my designed concept. The pragmatic, as the hedonic qualities of the experience can be evaluated and discussed within a design team. Although the time available to properly study the theory, develop a concept for our case, and perform the evaluation methods was kind of high paced, the end result and my confidence as a designer in the theory and practice of UX clearly improved.

rEfErEncES

Hassenzahl, M. (2010). Experience design: Technology for all the right reasons. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics, 3(1), 1-95.