We develop and test a model that suggests that expectations influence subjective usability and emotional experiences and, thereby, behavioral intentions to continue use and to recommend the service to others. A longitudinal study of 165 real-life users examined the proposed model in a proximity mobile payment domain at three time points: before use, after three weeks of use, and after six weeks of use. The results confirm the short-term influence of expectations on users’ evaluations of both usability and enjoyment of the service after three weeks of real-life use. Users’ evaluations of their experiences mediated the influence of expectations on behavioral intentions. However, after six weeks, users’ cumulative experiences of the mobile payment service had the strongest impact on their evaluations and the effect of pre-use expectations decreased. The research clarifies the role of expectations and highlights the importance of viewing expectations through a temporal perspective when evaluating user experience.

Positive emotional experiences with an interactive product are assumed to lead to good user experience and, ultimately, to product success. However, the path from emotional experiences to product evaluation may not be direct, as emotions fluctuate over time, and some experiences are easier to recall than others. In this study, we examined emotions and experience episodes during real-life mobile phone use over a five-month period. The goal is to understand how emotions and memories are related to overall evaluation of a product: usability, user experience and behavioral intentions. The results show that both emotions and how people remember them had strong unique roles in the overall evaluation of the product. Positive emotions were mostly related to good user experience and negative emotions to low usability. In the early stages of use, users overestimated their positive emotions and seemed to focus on user experience, the importance of usability increased over time.