User Experience in Evaluating Virtual Product Prototypes

Abstract

Experiential and emotional aspects have recently become central to nderstanding of interaction with technology. Understanding the building blocks of user experience helps in defining and designing better information systems and increasing market success of products. This paper focuses on user experience via users’ evaluations of virtual product prototypes. User experience being subjective, we analyse it through users’ own interpretations. The specific aim of this paper is to explain the alternative views on how consumers understand virtual product prototypes. We presented threedimensional prototypes of furniture to twenty test users and interviewed them afterwards. Phenomenography was used as a research approach for analyzing the descriptions, allowing us to outline, with the help of two layers, the differences in consumers’ understandings. The first layer contains the conceptions which consumers use when they describe virtual product prototypes. Based on the variations in the versatility of each test user’s description we constructed the second layer, which focuses on the forms of thinking. The three forms are: seeing I) a picture of a product via new technology, II) a separate product, and III) a product in its context. In our results, the user experience is understood as a unique combination of various elements, which extends over time.