Effects of user experience of smart artifacts on perceived smartness

Abstract

Smart artifact domestication has been transforming the home environment into a hybrid environment of physical and digital worlds. It has also affected the behaviors, expectations, frustrations, mindsets, and interactions of individuals with smart artifacts. Correspondingly, the definition of smartness is reconstructed by individuals who are the subject of the user experience of smart artifacts. This thesis investigates the impact of user experience with a focus on cognitive and emotional aspects on the perceived smartness of smart artifacts, aiming to better understand what users expect when a smart artifact is identified as 'smart'. With the rapid domestication of smart artifacts, ensuring user experience that enhances the smartness of the artifact and user experience from individuals' perspectives is of utmost importance. The purpose is to give attention to individuals' points of view and to contribute to the theoretical frameworks about how the users perceive what makes a smart artifact smart. The focus of this thesis is on understanding how emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience influence the perceived smartness concept. The study uses the user experience of smart artifacts as a tool by basing the research on the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience in the first stage. In the second stage, it investigates the hypothetical relationship between the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience and the perceived smartness concept. The thesis addresses three research questions as follows: • How do cognitive and emotional aspects of user experience influence the perceived smartness of users? • How do affordances and different interaction modes of smart artifacts affect user experience and perceived smartness? • How do individuals give meaning to smart artifacts, their user experience, and their smartness in relation to interaction modes? Selection of the exemplary smart artifacts is based on a smartness characteristics definition map designed by analyzing the previous smartness studies in the literature. Definitions from the previous studies are used as a base for a thematic analysis to structure the smartness characteristics definition map. Followingly, 15 smart artifacts are gathered from e-commerce websites, analyzed, and evaluated based on the smartness characteristics definition map. In the end, 3 smart artifacts, robot vacuum cleaners, smartwatches, and smart speakers, are selected as exemplary smart artifacts for the study. These smart artifacts also provide different affordances from each other by being mobile, being able to be controlled by voice, and being wearable technology. The exemplary smart artifacts are also analyzed based on their multimodal interaction modes, participation and communication types, and sensory levels. Pilot studies are conducted with 2 participants to understand if the selection of research methodologies is effective in researching emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience and their effects on the perceived smartness concept. The online research study is conducted to understand if user comments as narratives are efficient in understanding the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience and their effects on the perceived smartness concept. Finally, based on the insights gathered from the pilot study and the online research study, the research methodology of the case study is structured. The research study adopted a multi-layered methods approach to provide a comprehensive analysis. Initially, use sessions are conducted with participants, which are followed by a WhatsApp research study and questionnaires via Google Forms. Followingly, a series of semi-structured interviews is conducted with participants to gather insights into common user experience understanding. Lastly, a mapping study was conducted along think-aloud protocols to understand the relation between user experience and perceived smartness of smart artifacts. The second phase of the mapping study aimed to understand which functions and characteristics of the smart artifacts ensure that the smart artifacts are defined as 'smart' by the participants. The gathered data were used to analyze the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience and how these aspects influence the overall perceived smartness. To achieve this, all gathered data is analyzed by three levels of thematic analysis. In the first round, the data is divided into differentiated but meaningful bits of narratives, and the initial sub-themes are generated. In the second round, sub-themes are related to the emotional and cognitive aspects of UX, and parent themes are generated. In the third round, the generated sub-themes, parent themes, and emotional and cognitive aspects of UX relations are categorized under generated concepts that are umbrella terms for the key findings of the study. Focusing on the analyzed outcomes, about emotional aspects of UX of smart artifacts, emotional engagement, and intriguing existence concepts emerged. About cognitive aspects of UX of smart artifacts, gratifying experience, competence enhancement, connectivity, desirability, and identity attributions to the artifact concepts have emerged. As the results present, creating emotional engagement in users by talkability of an artifact, by interaction modes that can be defined emotional rather than robotic, and providing affordances and features that lead the users to characterize and humanize smart artifacts encourage users to emotionally bond with smart artifacts can lead the users to identify smart artifacts as smart. Also, it is seen that providing motivating and surprising interactions, and situations as intriguing experiences influence the perceived smartness positively. Secondly, focusing on the cognitive aspects of the user experience, it is seen that providing gratifying experiences that exceed user expectations and are better than other devices or the user's capabilities is found to be superior, which influences the perceived smartness positively. Enhancing the user's competence and abilities, both physically and mentally, and liberating the user from other devices, also affects the perceived smartness. In some error situations, smartness of the users is questioned by the users themselves. It is seen that by making information, other people, and other devices more accessible, the connectivity of a smart artifact transfers the smartness of the Internet, or other smart artifacts, to themselves, which leads participants to define the smart artifacts as smart. It has emerged that desirability depends on the smart artifact being a stylish and advanced technology product that has additional value compared to other artifacts, and by affecting the identity of the user, positively influencing the perceived smartness. Lastly, identity attributions of being familiar, flexible, and trust-worthy have a positive impact on the perceived smartness. In conclusion, this thesis demonstrates that apart from ergonomic aspects of UX, such as usability and efficiency, emotional and cognitive aspects of UX are also pivotal elements for enhancing the perceived smartness of smart artifacts. By paying attention to the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience, designers can create smart artifacts that are not only functional and efficient but also engaging and satisfying in terms of perceived smartness. The implications of this research are twofold. Firstly, it provides comprehensive insights about the emotional and cognitive aspects of the UX of smart artifacts for designers to take into account in the early phases of smart artifact design processes. Secondly, it contributes to the academic discourse by offering a conceptualization of emotional and cognitive aspects of UX that influence perceived smartness from the users' perspective. While the study highlights the emotional and cognitive aspects of user experience that influence perceived smartness, it also acknowledges its limitations, such as the number of participants and the exemplary smart artifact group, which can be extended in different studies.