Layers of User Expectations of Future
Technologies: an Early Framework
Thomas Olsson
Abstract
Tampere University of Technology
User’s expectations are identified as a factor affecting
the actual user experience in human-computer
interaction. Considering the context of emerging and
future technologies, users’ expectations can become
increasingly diverse, especially in terms of where they
stem from. This paper presents an early framework for
understanding different layers of expectations that
people might have of technologies in the near future:
for example, ‘desires’ and ‘social and societal norms’.
The framework provides understanding of the spectrum
of user expectations and what different aspects of them
could be identified in user inquiries and evaluations. For
concretization and credibility of this work-in-progress
framework, examples from recent research on user
expectations of mobile augmented reality are provided.
Department of Pervasive
Computing
P.O. Box 553
33101 Tampere, Finland
thomas.olsson@tut.fi
Author Keywords
Expectation; Anticipation; User experience; Emerging
technologies; User studies; Framework; Quality.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights
for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other
uses, contact the owner/author(s).
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2014, April 26–May 1, 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
ACM 978-1-4503-2474-8/14/04.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2581225
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2. User Interfaces: User-centered design.
Introduction
Expectations in general can be considered as something
that people anticipate or look forward to occur with
high probability or certainty [9]. Wright et al. [16]
Summary of user research
that forms the basis of the
framework (detailed report
in [10])
·
Focus on expectations
of services based on
mobile augmented
reality, which can
appear to users as a
combination of various
interaction techniques,
new types of accessible
information and aspects
of ubiquitous computing
·
Methods: focus groups,
contextual interviews,
an online survey
(mainly qualitative)
·
Altogether 231
participants in three
different studies
·
Participants from
various professions and
nationalities; mostly
early adopters
·
Visualized scenarios to
catalyze discussion
·
Bottom-up analysis by
categorizing the
expectations in a group
of 2-4 researchers
consider anticipation as one of the central human sense
making processes. Experience is always shaped by
what has gone before; happening prior to any actual
experience of use, the act of anticipating (or expecting)
an experience is based on the prior events, encounters
and interactions, and results in the formation of
expectations. Considering HCI and user experience
(UX), in fact, the ISO standard 9241-210 [6] seems to
draw a parallel between “the use” and “anticipated use”
as elements of UX. For example, familiarizing oneself
with a new product and its reviews not only affects
one’s perceptions of it, doing so also composes a
central part of the overall product experience.
A central premise for this work is the importance to
know what people as potential customers and end
users expect, and how to deliver according to the
expectations [18]. Moreover, true innovations should
exceed the expectations and address hidden, so far
unaddressed needs [6, 11]. Consequently, inquiring
people’s expectations of future and emerging
technologies is particularly important to understand
what successful innovations they could engender.
Expectations can reveal how people conceptualize the
novel technology [5], how the technology is expected
to serve people and what kinds of features are
expected of it [1]. This information can serve as an
insightful guidance for developing technology, products
and services. Unfortunately, the potential users’
expectations of future are challenging to study: they
have limited experience of similar technologies and it is
hard to gather detailed user responses based on
scenarios or other non-functional demonstrations. This
calls for theories and methods for eliciting rich
expectation data from the participants and analyzing it
in a way that reveals insightful information.
Taking a small step towards theoretical clarification of user
expectations, this paper presents a work-in-progress
framework about different layers of expectations. The
framework is intended to help researchers study and
identify different types of expectations and be able to
classify them in a meaningful and design-relevant way
(e.g. as design goals). The perspective is on emerging
technologies that people consider feasible in the near
future (the next 5 years or so) and hence can
comprehend. The framework is based on a theoretical
consolidation from several disciplines (e.g. [4, 15, 16,
18]) as well as personal insights from the author’s recent
empirical work on user expectations of mobile augmented
reality as an emerging technology [10].
The concept of user expectations is closely related to
concepts like ‘user requirements’, ‘user needs’, and
‘user values’. From the standpoint of this paper, the
concept of user expectations is seen slightly broader
than any of these. For example ‘user needs’ usually
only cover things that the user actually looks forward
to, wants or requires, whereas expectations can include
positive as well as negative (undesired) assumptions.
Here, the other concepts relate to sources of people’s
expectations of what the technological future could
(mainly values), should (mainly needs), or must
(mainly requirements) be. For example, people’s values
inherently entail a component of expectations towards
the future: e.g. the human value of beauty can create
an expectation of, ideally, also technology being pretty.
Background and Related Work
The topic of expectations has been mainly studied in
consumer and marketing research. A large portion of
the discussion is on societal level (e.g. [13]) but some
address the topic from a consumer or individual level,
which is more in focus here. Central topics are, e.g.,
the origins of expectations (e.g., how they are based on
earlier experiences) and to what aspects in products
and technology the expectations can be targeted at.
Nevertheless, compared to the weight of the concept of
expectations in various theories, rather little empirical
research has been conducted to corroborate them.
In the user experience literature, Arhippainen [1]
remarks expectations to influence the user’s
perceptions of the product’s capabilities and overall
quality. Hiltunen et al. [5] discuss expectations as the
basis of the user experience cycle: expectations direct
human interpretation and information gathering and
attention in using the product. Furthermore, according
to the expectation confirmation theory by
Bhattacherjee [2], expectations exist as a norm against
which the actual experience is compared. Simplified, if
a product outperforms the expectations, post-use
satisfaction will result, whereas if it falls short of
expectations, the user is likely to be dissatisfied. This
general interplay between expectations and experience
is often recognized in literature (e.g., [1,8,14]) and
was also recently empirically consolidated [12].
Figure 1. Framework of user
expectations. The layers can be
placed on a dimension of value
and quality, with E-BA and
S&SN on the same level.
Expectations highest on the
scale are most demanding but
create most pleasure if fulfilled.
Origins and sources of expectations
Regarding the origins of expectations, Zeithaml et al.
[18] identify, for example, word-of-mouth, own past
experience, personal needs, explicit service promises
(statements about the service made by the company to
customers) and implicit service promises (e.g., price,
ranking, awards). In the context of emerging
technologies, however, the latter two are irrelevant
because of the lack of business and product context,
allowing people assess only the technology per se, its
applications, and its risks and possibilities. In addition,
Dewey [4] mentions social factors, such as others’
opinions and experiences, traditions (e.g., norms,
personal tendencies) and influence of education. In
addition, considering theories of psychology, personal
characteristics like personality (e.g., optimism [7]),
values, attitudes towards technology and trust in future
most probably play roles in what kind of expectations
are formed and what are their relative weights.
Targets of Expectations
Considering HCI, users’ expectations could relate to, for
example, the product or service features, the use of
and interaction with it, its role in one’s life, or the
situations it could be used in. People may expect a
technology to offer certain possibilities for action or
outcome (e.g., what new activities does a product
allow) [16]. Yogasara et al. [17] report that users’
anticipations included various aspects related to the
context, experiential knowledge, and anticipated
emotion. Demir et al. [3] argue that the expectations
may also be about an unexplored aspect of a product
(e.g., performance prior to usage) and about the
consequence of an action (e.g., shaking a device to
reset it). Also these consolidate the breadth of user
expectations as a concept: they can be seen as
something that is not necessarily conscious or precisely
thought-through by the user.
Early Framework: Layers of Expectations
Another relevant literature that this framework draws
inspiration from is the levels of expectations by Teas
[15], focusing on consumer research and service
quality. On a dimension of quality from “desired
service” in the highest end and “adequate service” in
the lowest, the author distinguishes between “ideal
expectations”, “normative ‘should’ expectations”,
User quotes about
Desires:
“On a sad day the service
could cheer me up with an
indulgence mode” (male, 27
and female, 26)
“Seeing through the walls
would be great, so that I’d
see an approaching bus
upfront” (female, 23 and
male, 23).
“We’d want the service to
provide us with information
that cannot yet be found on
the packaging” (male, 23
and female, 22)
User quotes about
Experience-Based
Assumptions:
“The service could automatically compare prices
between your favorite
shops and tell where to get
for example the cheapest
cheerios” (male, 27).
“The augmented information in such a busy environment would mostly need to
be visual” (female, 24).
“[MAR] gaming applications
would be nice! Such would
work well in my group of
friends” (female, 24).
“experience-based norms”, “acceptable expectations”,
and, in the lower end, “minimum tolerance
expectations”. The presented framework (Figure 1)
adapts these levels and contextualizes the discussion to
HCI by introducing layers of expectations that can help
eliciting and analyzing user expectations. The layers are
termed here as (1) desires, (2) experience-based
assumptions, (3) social & societal norms, and (4) mustbe expectations. In addition to allowing placement on
the dimension of quality similarly as in the work by
Teas [15] (see Figure 1), the layers describe different
origins where user expectations can stem from. The
following sections describe the four layers in more detail
and discuss the possible origins and targets of the
expectations on each layer. To empirically consolidate the
framework, example user quotes are provided (see
margin) from recent studies on user expectations of
mobile augmented reality (MAR) [10].
Desires
Desires, aspirations and wants of people reflect what
they would truly value technology to offer and what its
role should be in the future. Desires are based on
inherent, underlying human needs, values, attitudes
and personality (technology-orientation or openness,
e.g.). Hence, desires are not necessarily specific to
certain technologies or based on personal experience
with any prior related technology. Overall, desires
evolve rather slowly and satisfying the desires can help
identifying long-lasting application areas for new
technology. Such, however, are challenging to gather
from participants and often too vague as design goals.
Examples of desire expectations include general values
like convenience, aesthetics, advancement of
technology and society, and life getting easier and
more efficient. In addition, common desires and values
across cultures like welfare and democratization, and
human needs like relatedness, self-actualization, and
competence can be general desires for technology –
something that people expect also technology to foster
and support. Examples from [10] include desire
expectations of MAR providing truly mind-augmenting
tools, proactive services, and feeling of increased
awareness of one’s surroundings.
Experience -based assumptions
Such expectations reflect what people are habituated to
and how their conceptual models see technology to
perform, behave and evolve, based on experiences of
their own and other significant people. Being
experience-based, these stem from interaction with and
use of earlier similar products and technologies (e.g.
WIMP as a starting point for learning new interface
metaphors like MAR). The expectations can be targeted
at, for example, how and with which modalities the
interaction takes place, the role of technology (which is
currently reactive rather than proactive), in what kind
of situations it might fail, look & feel and terminology,
types of content, information visualization solutions etc.
Examples of such include assumptions about where
specific information can be found on a web site or
preference of interaction techniques based on personal
experience. In addition, whereas desires can be mostly
regarded as positive aspects, experience-based
assumptions can include also negative expectations,
e.g. related to assumed limitations and weaknesses. An
example from MAR is the much-expected (or -feared)
information overflow, most probably based on
experiences on current information browsing interfaces
like the WWW. Such expectations are easily and often
User quotes about Social
and Societal Norms:
“I would leave tags and
comments with the service”
(male, 32).
“Getting additional
information should be based
on touching, e.g., products
with the device” (female, 26
and male, 27).
“The application would
probably slow people down
as they stop to wonder the
new information” (male, 27
and female, 26).
User quotes about MustBe Expectations
“The information about user
that has been saved on the
device must not spread
anywhere” (female, 23).
“I would definitely like to
interact with such a device
in an unnoticeable way”
(female, 24).
“There should not be too
much information on the
device screen so that the
user’s attention can be
focused on the real world as
well” (female, 24).
“The information should be
up to date with accuracy of
at least one day” (male, 27)
brought out in user studies and seem to heavily affect
people’s capabilities to foresee what technology can be
used for and how it is interacted with.
Social and societal norms
These describe what people assume technology to allow
and to feature, based on what phenomena and trends
currently hold – but regardless of what their inherent
desires or prior experiences are. Social and societal
norms are based on opinions of relevant other people
as well as broader cultural and societal factors like
fashion and trends, stereotypes, media and public
discourse about technology. Such expectations are
targeted at general aspects like usability, aesthetics,
social acceptability – in other words, norms about what
quality attributes and features technology currently
includes in a specific field or in general. For example, a
large touch screen has for several years been a
normative expectation for new and prime-quality
mobile phones, despite its challenges as the main input
technology. Other present-day examples include
privacy and user control (often brought out due to
extensive public discussion), look & feel (e.g. onepager WWW sites), and ever-enhancing ease of use.
Examples from MAR include the expectations of content
being user created and reliable, interaction following
the most recent advances in interaction techniques,
and the service feeling lively because of active service
community [10]. All in all, such expectations seem to
be often brought up in user-based studies. As common
and public issues they are easy to talk about.
Must-be expectations
Such expectations represent requirements that any
new technology should consider and take as minimum
requirements for user acceptance. These are based on
personal long-term experience of different types of
technologies and products; the distinction from
Experience-based assumptions is that these reflect
negative prior experiences – something that the user
would not want to experience again. For example, low
battery time as a bad experience of mobile computers
has, for many, set the limit of minimum acceptable
battery time to one day. In MAR and many other
emerging technologies, especially usability and trusting
the service content are something that people expect to
be “well taken care of”. Other examples of Must-be
expectations include ‘traditional’ quality attributes that
people have got used to being mostly well designed,
such as robust functionality, physical endurance,
appropriate price-quality ratio, and ergonomics. These
are often referred to as ‘hygiene factors’, i.e.,
something that can be taken for granted and noticed by
the user only if missing. Therefore, it is critical also to
understand how and what kind of expectations from the
other layers can become like these over time.
Discussion and Conclusions
This work-in-progress framework helps (1) researchers
plan user inquiries to elicit a rich diversity of user
expectations, and (2) both researchers and designers
analyze gathered expectations with better granularity,
possibly also prioritize the data according to the
dimension of quality as well as set design goals. The
framework describes, on one hand, different sources
and examples of expectations of especially emerging
technologies and, on the other hand, different target
levels on the dimension of quality. Simply following the
expectations mentioned by users does not necessarily
guarantee a successful product or technology, as often
discussed in UCD-critical literature. Therefore, to guide
and inspire design of new technology, it is important to
understand the expectation components holistically and
gather information on multiple layers.
[8]
Karapanos, E., Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J.,
Martens, J.-B. User experience over time: An initial
framework. Proc. CHI’09 (2009), 729-738).
Refining and extending the framework requires further
empirical studies with different future technologies and
methods, as well as reflection with other theories and
other researchers in the field – both in terms of how well it
explains the phenomena around user expectations and
how insightful it is for development of technology. Over
the time, the framework could be operationalized into
concrete methods, measures and, e.g., interview
questions to allow identification of various user
expectations in different types of studies.
[9]
Merriam-Webster online dictionary. http://www.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expectation.
References
[1]
Arhippainen, L. Studying user experience: issues
and problems of mobile service – Case Adamos: user
experience (im)possible to catch? Doctoral dissertation,
University of Oulu, 2009.
[2]
Bhattacherjee, A. Understanding information
systems continuance: an expectation–confirmation
model. MIS Quarterly 25, 3 (2001), 351-370.
[3]
Demir, E., Desmet, P., Hekkert, P.P.M. Appraisal
patterns of emotions in user-product interaction.
International Journal of Design 3, 2 (2009), 41-51.
[4]
Dewey, J. Experience and nature. McCutchen
Press, 2008, 480p.
[5]
Hiltunen, M., Laukka, M., Luomala, J. Professional
mobile user experience. IT Press, Finland, 2002, 300p.
[6]
International Organisation for Standardisation,
ISO FDIS 9241-210: Ergonomics of human system
interaction – Part 210: Human-centred design for
interactive systems. (2010)
[7]
Kaiser, C.R., Major, B., Mccoy, S.K. Expectations
about the Future and the Emotional Consequences of
Perceiving Prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin 30, 2 (2004), 173-184.
[10] Olsson, T., Lagerstam, E., Kärkkäinen, T.,
Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, K. Expected User Experience
of Mobile Augmented Reality Services: A User Study in
the Context of Shopping Centers. Personal and
Ubiquitous Computing 17, 2 (2013), 287-304.
[11] Pine, B.J., Gilmore, J.H. The experience economy.
Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 1999.
[12]
Raita, E., Oulasvirta, A. Too good to be bad:
Favorable product expectations boost subjective
usability ratings. Interacting with Computers 23, 4
(2011), 363-371.
[13] Rosenberg, N. On Technological Expectations. The
Economic Journal 86, 343 (1976), 523-535.
[14] Roto, V., Law, E., Vermeeren, A.P.O.S.,
Hoonhout, J. (Eds) User experience white paper:
Bringing clarity to the concept of user experience,
(2011) Available:
http://www.allaboutux.org/uxwhitepaper
[15] Teas, R.K. Expectations, performance evaluation
and consumers’ perceptions of quality. Journal of
Marketing, October (1993), 18-34.
[16] Wright, P., Wallace, J., McCarthy, J. Aesthetics
and experience-centered design. Transactions on
Computer-Human Interaction 15, 4 (2008), 21p.
[17] Yogasara, T., Popovic, V., Kraal, B., Camorro-Koc,
M. General characteristics of anticipated user
experience (AUX) with interactive products. Proc.
IASDR’11, (2011), 1-11.
[18]
Zeithaml, V.A., Bitner, M.J., Gremler, D.D.
Services marketing. Integrating customer focus across
the firm. McGraw-Hill, 2002, 688p.