Sustaining the experience
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
UX Honeycomb from Peter Morville
I had an interesting conversation the other day about sustaining the ubiquitous computing experience – prompted by the limited user experience provided by the augmented mobile browser Layar. Layar provides graphical information overlays which are geo-located through the use of geo-data. They are then visible through android based phones such as the HTC Hero. Unfortunately, at the moment it seems as it has only novelty value and my colleague grew bored after half-an-hour of use.
This got me thinking about engaging user experiences. I’ve noticed myself that there are some websites, devices or applications I use once or a couple of times, then never use again. At other times, they seem to fit in with my short-term activities and are really useful resources. Indeed there are some that I would class as providing a sustained experience - i.e. an engaging experience that is more than a passing fad. As an example, I use my 5 years old Nokia mobile phone all the time for texting, checking email and even making phone calls. A slightly more complicated example is my use of Twitter, where it peaks around sporting events I’m interested in.
It seems to me that there are a few themes around the question of how we can make user experiences sustainable – perhaps it is related to content and how often it’s updated, perhaps it’s related to the overall aesthetics of the experience or maybe it’s to do with personal narratives and how will the experience fit into that?
