It is well-established that while cognitive psychology provides a sound
foundation for an understanding of our interactions with digital
technology, this is no longer sufficient to make sense of how we use and
experience the personal, relational and ubiquitous technologies that
pervade everyday life. This book begins with a consideration of the
nature of experience itself, and the user experience (UX) of digital
technology in particular, offering a new, broader definition of the
term. This is elaborated though a wide-ranging and rigorous review of
what are argued to be the three core UX elements. These are involvement,
including shared sense making, familiarity, appropriation and
"being-with" technologies; affect, including emotions with and about
technology, impressions, feelings and mood; and aesthetics, including
embodied aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. Alongside this, new insights
are introduced into how and why much of our current use of digital
technology is simply idling, or killing time.
A particular feature of the book is a thorough treatment of parallel,
and sometimes competing, accounts from differing academic traditions.
Overall, the discussion considers both foundational and more recent
theoretical and applied perspectives from social psychology,
evolutionary psychology, folk psychology, neuroaesthetics,
neuropsychology, the philosophy of technology, design and the fine arts.
This broad scope will be enlightening and stimulating for anyone
concerned in understanding UX.
A Psychology of User Experience stands as a companion text to the
author's HCI Redux text which discusses the contemporary treatment
of cognition in human-computer interaction.
