Evaluating the Designed Experiences

After designing an experience through technology with an in-situ prototype, participants live the experience. The participants’ experience during the interaction with the created prototype is to be analysed and subsequently compared to the experience as defined in the Experience Story (see Section 2.3.2).

To this purpose, the experience designed through technology is analysed by the same tools and methods as used for the design step of the analysis (see Section 2.3.1). Thus, the Narrative Episodic Interviews are called to action again, in order to gather information on the experience in a

holistic way. Additionally, with the help of the need-questionnaire and the PANAS additional data is gathered to verify if the intended psychological needs have been addressed and if the intended emotions have occurred.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)

An addition method, theInterpretative Phenomenological Analysis, helps to analyse the phenom- ena of the experience in its context. In their book, "Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis," Smith, Flowers, and Larkin describe the IPA as a method for a detailed qualitative analysis of peoples’ experiences [SFL09]. Furthermore, IPA is presented as an approach, "...to qualitative, experiential and psychological research which has been informed by concepts and debates from three key areas of the philosophy of knowledge: phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography" (p. 11 in [SFL09]).

By being phenomenological, the IPA is focused on the experience and its perception. Thereby, also the context of an experience becomes relevant, because people are not isolated but "embedded and immersed in a world of objects and relationships, language and culture, projects and concerns" (p.21 in [SFL09]). Smith further argues, "In IPA research, our attempts to understand other peo- ple’s relationship to the world are necessarily interpretative, and will focus upon their attempts to make meanings out of their activities and the things happening to them" (p.21 in [SFL09]). As a theory of interpretation, Smith chooses to use hermeneutics. Following Heidegger, "IPA is con- cerned with examining how a phenomenon appears, and the analyst is implicated in facilitating and making sense of this appearance" (p.28 in [SFL09]). Another influence of IPA is idiography, which is concerned with the particular [SFL09]. This is in contrast to the nomothetic approach of psychology, which is concerned about the establishment of general laws for human behaviour. As Smith describes, "This emphasis on the particular (and the focus on grasping the meaning of some- thing for a given person) cannot be conflated exactly with a focus on the individual even though this may appear to provide a convenient shorthand for what idiography does" (p.29 in [SFL09]). The focus of the particular is two-level [SFL09]. On the one hand, it is on the sense of detail, which offers depth to the analysis and requires a thorough and systematic analysis. On the other hand, the focus of the particular is on the perspective of particular people and particular contexts, which require, "...small, purposively-selected and carefully-situated samples, and may make very effective use of single case analyses" (p.29 in [SFL09]).

By the application of IPA, gathered experiences are analysed in an iterative and inductive circle fol- lowing different strategies, as Smith et al. elaborates. One strategy consists of a close line-by-line examination of experimental claims, concerns, and understandings of each participant [SFL09]. Another strategy is built upon the identification of patterns emerging from the experimental ma- terial, developing a dialogue between researchers, their data, and their psychological knowledge about, e.g., the reasons of the concerns of the participants. Another strategy is the development of a structure, frame or gestalt, which illustrates relationships between themes. Furthermore, Smith et al. initiates six flexible steps to apply IPA. These are described in the following:

1. Reading and re-reading

Reading the script over and over again and letting the participant become the focus of the analysis.

2. Initial noting

Analysing not only the semantic content but also the language on a highly exploratory level and noting with an open mind everything of interest.

3. Developing emerging themes

Reducing the volume of the detail but keeping the complexity of the data. 4. Searching for connections across emerging themes

Searching for connections by using abstraction and subsumption. 5. Moving to the next case

Taking the ideas of the first case into account and moving on to work on the second one (if this is not a single-case study).

6. Looking for patterns across cases

Identifying connections between cases, which can lead to illuminating a different case. After having completed these steps, Smith et al. recommend to go deeper into the interpretation by taking more experiences. Moreover, they argue that it is important to note doubts (e.g., through psychological theories) only in separated abstracts.

When working with large samples (bigger than six) the focus switches from themes in single cases to themes in the whole group, looking for patterns and connections between all cases. Smith et al. further argues that it is important to measure recurrence, e.g., by counting how often a theme is talked about [SFL09].

As the IPA is a method focusing on the impact of something in a real life environment, it is used to analyse the impact of a prototype that is created to trigger experiences in situ. Thereby, it can be possible to link design decisions to their experimental consequences [LHB+_13].

II

EXPERIENCE

DESIGN

BEYOND THE

Chapter

3

Design Cases:

Experiences on Group Drives for Pleasure

As mentioned in Chapter 1, this work focuses on experiences beyond the driving task, either on group drives with friends for pleasure, or on commuting alone. These situations do not define a de- sign space for experience beyond driving, but they are common opposing situations in this design space. Both of the situations can create positive experiences based on their unique characteristics. The experiences designed in this chapter are connected to driving together with friends for plea- sure. Driving together with friends contains possibilities for social experiences, in the sense that one wants to feel part of a group and feel close to loved ones. When driving across mostly unknown roads, cruising around can become an exploration experience.

This Chapter shows two cases of designed experiences for driving with friends on an unfamiliar route. The first design case,CliqueTrip, takes place in the scenario of driving with friends in a mo- torcade. This system aims to foster the relatedness of the group of friends even when separated into different cars. The second design case, ExplorationRide, takes place in the scenario of exploring new areas by car with a group of friends. This case is designed to provide the mood of exploration and to make the exploration trip a positive joint experience.

In each design case, possibilities for experiences are first collected and analysed. Following that, a story is written as a blueprint of the design experience. After creating an experimental prototype, a respective summative in-situ user study analyses the experiences the participants lived through. Later on, in Chapter 4, a best practice and recommendations based on these case studies are pre- sented.

Through creating insights and generalisable knowledge the design cases help to understand and better design such experiences. Therefore, different experiences are created and illustrated from the analysis to the experience that the participants live through during interaction with the system. First of all, Section 3.1 shows a design case of feeling related despite distance while driving in a group with more than one car. Afterwards, in the second design case, presented in Section 3.2, the designed experience fosters exploration through a group drive with friends.

3.1 Mastering Distance in a Motorcade: Let the Whole

Group be Close

This section is based on the paper "CliqueTrip: Feeling related in different cars" published in 2012 by Martin Knobel, Marc Hassenzahl, Melanie Lamara, Tobias Sattler, Josef Schumann, Kai Eckoldt and Andreas Butz [KHL+_12].

Tobias Sattler implemented the mock-up and the prototype under my supervision.

This design case takes place in the first situation of driving together with friends. The aim of this design case is two-fold: first of all, it explores the designing of experiences in practice, and secondly, it examines the designing of an experience in the specific scenario of driving together with friends in a motorcade.