Socio-emotional Experience in Human Technology Interaction Design : A Fashion Framework Proposal

Technology designers and developers can be understood as social experience (SE) mediators. In user experience (UX), notions of SE have served to identify and define the factors contributing to human-technology interaction (HTI). Three dominant perspectives have been promoted in UX discourse: 1) SE of brand, brand value and consumer culture; 2) technology design as mediator of human-to-human interactions; and 3) meaning generation through action and interaction between actors. Symbolic interactionalism understands meaning as occurring through dialogue, in the construction of the social self, promoting self-reflection as a social construction. This theorisation of social experience is valuable in the context of HTI as it allows for greater insight into the immaterial dimensions of technology integration in human societies. The purpose of this paper is to break down the factors contributing to social emotional experience of technology through illustrating how it operates according to fashion – temporality and spatiality in culture. This is a theoretical paper that presents a review of social experience, social emotional and collective emotion based literature in light of fashion and design. The result is a presentation of a proposed fashion framework of social emotions in technology interaction design (FASHEM). Based on symbolic interactionism, FASHEM helps break down emotional technology experience into a matrix of self, other, design, and semiotic interactions.