What makes user experience meaningful?
The five components of ‘meaning’ in human-computer interaction
What makes interacting with computers good? Most user experience research focus on usability, satisfaction, and positive emotions for good reasons. Our job as designers is to help the user get things done through our interfaces. As computers become more ubiquitous in everyday life, the more impact they have on people’s general well-being. One key aspect is the human experience of meaning.
There is growing interest in how technology use affects people’s experience of meaning. For instance, Lukoff and colleagues explored what makes smartphone use meaningful or meaningless. Beyond mere task efficiency and momentary joy, there are opportunities to design enduring meaningful user experience. For example, meaningfulness is one of the design goals of Fibo, a wrist-worn pregnancy bracelet wearable for men which enables them to feel the movement of their unborn child. This leads us to the question, what makes user experience meaningful?
The five components of meaning
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to design for meaningfulness without a framework of meaning. Mekler and Hornbaek argues that meaning need not be abstract. Based on meaning research in psychology, they propose that…
