Continuous Time Experience: Conceptualizing the Memory gaps of Smartphone use for UX Design

Abstract

Background As smartphone use is pervading every moment of our daily lives, it is necessary to study the experience consequences of an omnipresent technology. Thereby, most of the durations of smartphone use remain inaccessible to UX Design due to a lack of conceptual frameworks regarding the nature of unfocused use. To overcome this limitation, this paper conceptualizes the seemingly empty durations between conscious smartphone use as an untapped design space for user experience Methods We conducted a qualitative study with 13 participants based on the diary methodology. The study asked the question of what people remember from their smartphone use. We chose the methodology of the Elicitation Diary (Day Reconstruction Method), with the objective to co-interpret and reflect on experiences in retrospect. The data type consisted of drawings (storyboards and UX-Curves) that were created by the participants over the course of 14 weeks in five workshops. Result We complemented the momentary pragmatic and hedonic factors of UX, with longer lasting impressionistic factors of the human experience, in order to build a first conceptual framework that extends existing UX approaches towards a continuous experience perspective. Thus, we focus on the role of continuous time experience with the smartphone, and how people customize those willfully into the ways they prefer to perceive time. As the participants reconstructed their memory they were not guided by their conscious memory, but their impressionistic experience.Conclusion To understand new dynamics in the long-term relationships between people and their smartphone, this paper conceptualizes the memory gaps of smartphone use as an untapped design space for UX.