Dennis Breen from nForm recently sent me a wonderful email with some great ideas and questions. With his permission here’s our conversation.
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> Hi Richard,
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the characteristics of experience.
> I’m wondering how (or if) user effort would fit into your framework. I’ve
> been thinking about some recent experiences, and effort seems to
> have an important impact on my feelings about an interaction. Let me
> illustrate.
Hi Dennis, I think ‘effort’ is applicable across all of the principles
and characteristics – if a user has to exert an inappropriate amount
for the return they see then its a ‘bad’ experience. The examples
below are some great situations, I hadn’t really thought about how the
framework applies to service experiences but here are some initial
thoughts:
> badly and the dye bled onto clothing underneath). I contacted them. They
> hummed and hawed. Finally they asked me to send the jacket for analysis. I
> did so. They told me the jacket leaked because it was worn through by
> backpack straps. The jacket was new, and a backpack had never been worn
> with it. They hummed and hawed some more. Finally, after much cajoling,
> they gave me a new jacket and a cheap cycling jersey. I (sort of) got what I
> wanted, but the effort was so great that I vowed never to purchase their
> products again.
“control” (controllable is one of the ‘principles’ in the other
diagram). You had an outcome in mind, but unfortunately had to exert
too much effort resulting in a bad experience.
> flat) far from the rental location. I visited the nearest rental office.
> They sent me to a tire shop. I waited as they tried to get approval to fix
> it from the original rental office (the local one couldn’t approve it). I
> finally got it done, but I wasted half a day of vacation. I left angry and
> frustrated. When I dropped the car off I told the attendant about the
> experience. He immediately offered to cut the price of the entire rental in
> half. I didn’t have to ask for a reduction – I just told him of the
> incident. He offered to make it right without hesitation. In the final
> interaction I had to give very little effort to get a positive result.
The first part of this experience is similar to the one above – too
much effort to ‘control’ the experience (getting the tire changed),
the last part is interesting – and ties into something I was just
putting together earlier today! I’ve been thinking that ‘relevance’
has four major aspects:
Environment (time, place, events)
Person (knowledge, abilities, demographics)
Situation (goal, task)
Experience (expectations, emotions)
I’ll be writing more about these on the blog, but I think your final
interaction with the car company is an example of exceeding your
relevant ‘expectations’ with very little effort on your part –
resulting in a great experience!
> one trip to find a place, then negotiated from afar. I had to have a house
> inspection, an additional furnace inspection, and some other things done. My
> realtor handled everything for me without being asked. She would just say:
> you need x done. I know someone. I’ll call them for you if you like. She
> anticipated my needs, and I got everything I needed with virtually no
> effort.
So, elements of exceeding expectations again, but an interesting
aspect is the ‘anticipating your needs’ piece – which may well be an
‘adaptive’ experience (if she was changing her interactions with you
based on her ongoing interactions). If she was simply being a good
realtor, however, based on her experience in general then she was
probably being very ‘relevant’ (to your tasks/goals).
> completed my task. But the feeling at the end is different because of the
> effort I had to expend in order to achieve my goal. Of course, there are
> other factors that affected each experience, but it seems that an
> interaction needs to have an appropriate level of effort. Maybe this relates
> to your Adaptive characteristic.
I’m hesitant to add ‘effort’ as a stand-alone since it seems as though
it always has to be paired with one of the other principles or
characteristics, but what do you think?
The Characteristics of User Experience 