Appraisal and Mental Contents in Human-Technology Interaction

Abstract

User experience has become a key concept in investigating human-technology interaction. Therefore it has become essential to consider how user experience can be explicated using psychological concepts. Emotion has been widely considered to be an important dimension of user experience, and one obvious link between modern psychology and the analysis of user experience assumes the analysis of emotion in interaction processes. In this paper, the focus is on the relationship between action types and elicited emotional patterns. In three experiments including N = 40 participants each, it is demonstrated that the types of emotions experienced when people evaluate and use technical artefacts differ based on the stances they take toward these artefacts. One cannot approach user experience irrespective of the careful analysis of the situation-specific emotional themes. It is essential to any theory of user experience to consider the nature of the situation and relevant actions.