How close do you feel to your devices? Visual assessment of emotional relationships with digital devices

Abstract

With modern digital devices becoming more adaptive and more personalized, usage behavior has changed dramatically. Devices are no longer mere technological equipment but are discussed to be “social companions” [1]. However, measures, scales and instruments barely keep in step with both the new ways of usage and the resulting new perspective on the devices [2]. Thus, measurements focusing on social and relational aspects of modern media use are rare. This paper addresses the need to develop new methodological approaches. Further, as online assessment tools are increasingly popular but face design-related disadvantages (e.g., termination, uncertain quality of data) it argues for a high quality design process. Consequently, this paper focuses on a new online instrument (labeled POD 1.0: Positioning Others and Devices) which has been developed to assess the relationship between users and their devices [1]. However, the first version of this tool raised problems (e.g., user errors, dropout rate). By attributing these shortcomings to design and layout [6, 11], a heuristic expert analysis of problems was conducted following a user-centered-design process (UCD). Three low fidelity prototypes resulted and were evaluated with evaluations leading on to the final prototype: POD 2.0. Further, this POD 2.0 was evaluated. 44 participants engaged in a long-term user study. Compared to the original tool, results revealed an improvement of both effectivity and satisfaction of the instrument.

In sum, the present study brings instruments to focus which assess social and relational characteristics of a long-term user-device interaction. Further, user-centered-design processes are adopted to modify and refine the POD 1.0 indicating a promising way to improve the goodness of online assessment tools.