As remote collaboration becomes central to contemporary work, it is crucial to understand how digital tools shape user experience (UX) and work engagement. This study examines how product design teams use Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard (OCW), to support collaboration in remote and hybrid work contexts. We identify unity as a core positive experience, consisting of four experiential forms: aggregation, relationality, connection, and fun. Using a sociomaterial lens, we show how these experiences emerge not from tool features alone, but from their entanglement with situated practices. Our contributions are fivefold: we (1) conceptualize unity as a distinct dimension of positive UX; (2) offer an epistemological response to HCI’s call for relational, entangled approaches; (3) trace how unity emerges through sociomaterial configurations; (4) link these experiences to psychological need fulfilment and work engagement; and (5) demonstrate how positive UX arises through ordinary moments of digital work.

Transparency in teamwork and across team members' status is one of the main challenges in remote work, and using online collaborative whiteboards (OCW) is a potential solution for more transparent teamwork.We explore the experience of transparency of three design teams who used an OCW called Miro in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic.Our aim was to gain in-depth understanding on what constitutes transparency in this teamwork context.We conducted a qualitative interview study with 11 participants who are user experience and service designers, and who actively use Miro in their daily work.We adopted sociomateriality as our research lens and thematically analysed the data, finding that transparency at work is a dynamic experience ranging between positive and negative.Rather than being merely users' or organisations' choices or the result of the tool affordances, the experience of transparency at work is an outcome of sociomaterial entanglements between the user, tool, and organisation.Furthermore, the occupational and organisational factors not only affect the experience of transparency, but they also actively constitute it.

Context: Knowledge transfer plays an important role in digital Service Creation Projects where information should flow through service design, Agile UX, and software implementation phases. One context for these handovers exists in projects where the service designers participate in the early phases of exploring and scoping the service, while agile user experience specialists take over the digital parts of service design and programmers the software implementation. Objective: The purpose of this study is to summarise scientific knowledge into best practices for effective information flow in real world Service Creation Projects. Special attention is paid on an important and understudied project phase, knowledge handover from service design to software implementation, which is referred as Service Design Handover in this study. Method: A systematic literature review was conducted to analyse the current scientific knowledge on knowledge transfer in digital Service Creation Projects. PRISMA 2020 statement was used for reporting the review, which also influenced planning and execution of the systematic review process. SCOPUS search brought up 773 publications, and the full content analysis was done for the 41 most relevant publications. Results: Based on the literature analysis, the best practices for effective knowledge transfer are related to communication quality and quantity, circumventing the need for communication, and verifying successful communication. To provide an overview of effective knowledge transfer, frameworks of Service Creation Project information flow and Service Design Handover are proposed. Conclusion: The existing knowledge transfer literature is voluminous, but this literature review is the first to study knowledge transfer in Service Creation Project context. The framework, best practices, and list of potential problem sources in knowledge transfer provide new knowledge for managing the information flow in service creation. The research gaps found in this literature review show the need for future research, such as empirical studies on service creation practice.

Service design has gained tractions in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as an approach to deal with changes of technology design scopes. In the meantime, there are confusions around definitions of service design and its relevance to HCI. Despite the co-existence of interests and confusions, little research has been done for a comprehensive overview of how HCI interprets and adopts service design. This research performed a systematic literature review on extant HCI publications that claim to use service design. The review findings from the 179 publications revealed varying dimensions of service design taken up in HCI, relations between service design scopes and emerging technologies, as well as unclarity to service design in HCI and HCI's current tendency to use service design for the interaction level rather than the system level. We discuss future design and research opportunities for HCI by integrating the system level dimensions of service design.

User experience (UX) research has been criticized for focusing on leisure contexts and overlooking the work contexts. Moreover, researchers have been drawing attention to how UX at work differs from UX in leisure contexts, requiring development of domain specific knowledge. Inspired by these discussions, our motivation is to see the current state of UX at work research. Based on the systematic review of 52 papers, our results revealed that UX at work research is still immature. It is run by dichotomies; the conceptualizations such as the definition and the dimensions of UX at work are ambiguous; the variety of the studied work domains are limited and do not contribute to the understanding of UX at work; and the consideration of contextual factors are arbitrary and coincidental. To advance this important field of research, we indicate the research gaps and suggest a research agenda introducing areas for future research.

The ongoing transition within tech industry towards holistic service journey orchestration pushes user experience design (UXD) closer to service design (SD). At the same time, new digital channels for traditional services pushes SD closer to UXD. The increasing interplay between UXD and SD can cause confusion about their relationship, boundaries, and responsibilities. Little research has examined perceptions of these aspects in industry and academia. We surveyed 197 UXD and SD practitioners and academics about their understanding of the overlaps and boundaries between the two design practices. Our findings reveal several conflicting views around the scope of UXD and SD work, the subsumptive relation between UXD and SD, and the theoretical roots and methods each draws upon. We suggest constructive ways for the two design practices to complement each other. Our study shows that UX work is changing, and understanding this change is important to maintain the relevance of UX research.

The HCI community cares for the human and social aspects of technologies. Ethical discussion on the social implications of new technologies often happen among researchers, but it is important to raise this discussion also in the industry that designs and implements new systems. In this paper, we introduce a case in which design fiction was used as an ethical discussion tool among company partners. We report the process of creating and prototyping a fictional world embedded with conflicting values that aimed to shift the focus from industrial merits towards societal values and raise discussion among participants. Moreover, we examine the challenges and propose suggestions in crafting critiques and friction to the industrial context. Our findings suggest why and how one should use design fiction as a means to raise ethical awareness in a technology- and profit-focused context, to support further activities on developing more humane technological futures.

Noam Tractinsky’s article “The Usability Construct: A Dead End?” (2017) elaborately reviews the history and problematics of the usability construct as an umbrella construct of the human–computer in...

The core idea of experience-driven design is to define the intended experience before functionality and technology. This is a radical idea for companies that have built their competences around specific technologies. Although many technology companies are willing to shift their focus towards experience-driven design, reports on real-life cases about the utilization of this design approach are rare. As part of an industry-led research program, we introduced experience-driven design to metal industry companies with experience goals as the key technique. Four design cases in three companies showed that the goals are useful in keeping the focus on user experience, but several challenges are still left for future research to tackle. This exploratory research lays ground for future research by providing initial criteria for assessing experience design tools. The results shed light on utilizing experience goals in industrial design projects and help practitioners in planning and managing the product design process with user experience in mind.

Since the third wave in human–computer interaction (HCI), research on user experience (UX) has gained momentum within the HCI community. The focus has shifted from systematic usability requirements and measures towards guidance on designing for experiences. This is a big change, since design has traditionally not played a large role in HCI research. Yet, the literature addressing this shift in focus is very limited. We believe that the field of UX research can learn from a field where design and experiential aspects have always been important: design research. In this article, we discuss why design is needed in UX research and how research that includes design as a part of research can support and advance UX design practice. We do this by investigating types of design-inclusive UX research and by learning from real-life cases of UX-related design research. We report the results of an interview study with 41 researchers in three academic research units where design research meets UX research. Based on our interview findings, and building on existing literature, we describe the different roles design can play in research projects. We also report how design research results can inform designing for experience methodologically or by providing new knowledge on UX. The results are presented in a structured palette that can help UX researchers reflect and focus more on design in their research projects, thereby tackling experience design challenges in their own research.

The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing the actual users and stepping into their shoes. The Technology approach considers the new technologies that are being introduced and their positive or negative influence on UX. Finally, the Vision approach focuses on renewal, introducing new kinds of UXs. In the design of industrial systems, several stakeholders are involved and they should share common design goals. Using the different UX goal-setting approaches together brings in the viewpoints of different stakeholders, thus committing them to UX goal setting and emphasising UX as a strategic design decision.

Context: Companies increasingly strive to adapt to market and ecosystem changes in real time. Evaluating team performance in such changing environments presents a major challenge. Objective: This paper aims to understand how software developers experience performance in a highly volatile environment. This understanding could be used as a basis for guiding formation and maintenance of high-performing teams. Method: A qualitative multiple-case study using thematic interviews was conducted with 16 experienced practitioners in five organisations. Results: We found 33 major categories of performance factors, arranged as a theoretical structure that explains how the subjects experience software team performance. Conclusions: Based on our study, software teams are engaged in a constant cycle of interpreting their performance and aligning it with other stakeholders. Enhancing performance experiences requires integration of soft factors, such as communication, team spirit, and team identity, into the overall development process.

The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product. So far, user experience studies have mostly focused on short-term evaluations and consequently on aspects relating to the initial adoption of new product designs. Nevertheless, the relationship between the user and the product evolves over long periods of time and the relevance of prolonged use for market success has been recently highlighted. In this paper, we argue for the cost-effective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. We propose a method called the “UX Curve” which aims at assisting users in retrospectively reporting how and why their experience with a product has changed over time. The usefulness of the UX Curve method was assessed in a qualitative study with 20 mobile phone users. In particular, we investigated how users’ specific memories of their experiences with their mobile phones guide their behavior and their willingness to recommend the product to others. The results suggest that the UX Curve method enables users and researchers to determine the quality of long-term user experience and the influences that improve user experience over time or cause it to deteriorate. The method provided rich qualitative data and we found that an improving trend of perceived attractiveness of mobile phones was related to user satisfaction and willingness to recommend their phone to friends. This highlights that sustaining perceived attractiveness can be a differentiating factor in the user acceptance of personal interactive products such as mobile phones. The study suggests that the proposed method can be used as a straightforward tool for understanding the reasons why user experience improves or worsens in long-term product use and how these reasons relate to customer loyalty.

Despite the growing interest in user experience (UX), it has been hard to gain a common agreement on the nature and scope of UX. In this paper, we report a survey that gathered the views on UX of 275 researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. Most respondents agree that UX is dynamic, context-dependent, and subjective. With respect to the more controversial issues, the authors propose to delineate UX as something individual (instead of social) that emerges from interacting with a product, system, service or an object. The draft ISO definition on UX seems to be in line with the survey findings, although the issues of experiencing anticipated use and the object of UX will require further explication. The outcome of this survey lays ground for understanding, scoping, and defining the concept of user experience.

Rolling back to previously visited Web pages and opening multiple browser windows or tabs at the same time are common activities in a Web browsing session on a PC. When using a mobile device for Web browsing, these usage patterns have to be supported seamlessly in the mobile environment under the additional constraint of limited screen real estate. In this paper, we introduce a solution called rolling history, a user interface targeted for mobile devices with 4-way navigation control and graphics acceleration hardware. We tested the usefulness of a rolling history prototype in two small-scale user studies and the results indicate that rolling history is a useful feature for Web history navigation and browser windows management. The rolling history case demonstrates how to design a unique user interface for a mobile device without displacing the deep-seated use patterns that people have found useful on a PC.

Mobile access to the Internet is increasing but still dominated by early adopters. To attract more users, user experience of mobile Internet needs to be improved. This requires understanding better mobile users and usage contexts to identify the kinds of services that users will be ready to use. In addition to increasing the attractiveness of services, successful user experience also requires improvements in devices and infrastructures such as networks, browsers and proxies and means to find situationally relevant services. This workshop calls developers and researchers of mobile Internet to exchange experiences and ideas how user experience of mobile Internet could be improved.

This paper describes a series of user studies on how people use the Web via mobile devices. The data primarily comes from contextual inquiries with 47 participants between 2004 and 2007, and is complemented with a phone log analysis of 577 panelists in 2007. We report four key contextual factors in using the Web on mobile devices and propose mobile Web activity taxonomy. The framework contains three user activity categories identical to previous stationary Web studies: information seeking, communication, and transaction, and a new category: personal space extension. The new category refers to the practice that people put their content on the Web for personal access, therefore extending their personal information space.

WLAN link layer security has been well studied but very little work exists in the area of intuitive access control inside home networks. In this paper we propose an approach that allows fine-grained access control without overburdening users with difficult questions or complicated configuration tasks. The proposed concept originated from a user needs study and user trials, and it builds on the existing WiFi Protected Setup standard.

The Web has become available even on mobile phones, but the current methods to view large pages on small screens have not been highly usable. Current mobile phone browsers reformat Web pages to a single column that fits the screen width. Because not all content is comprehensible in this format, browsers provide a second mode for viewing pages in the same layout as on a PC. We have developed a modeless Web page visualization method called Minimap that shows pages in a modified Original layout. We conducted a long-term usability study with 20 participants to compare the state-of-the-art mobile phone browser with this new method. 18 participants preferred the new method, and it also scored better in more detailed usability ratings.

Abstract The search tools familiar from the personal computer are propagating to mobile devices. Are users willing to type keywords with the limited keypad of an ordinary mobile phone? How does mobile search differ from stationary search? The author found that users are surprisingly willing to use search also with the traditional phone keypad, and foresees a search revolution as mobile devices enable location‐based search.

When on the move, cognitive resources are reserved partly for passively monitoring and reacting to contexts and events, and partly for actively constructing them. The Re-source Competition Framework (RCF), building on the Multiple Resources Theory, explains how psychosocial tasks typical of mobile situations compete for cognitive resources and then suggests that this leads to the depletion of resources for task interaction and eventually results in the breakdown of fluent interaction. RCF predictions were tested in a semi-naturalistic field study measuring attention during the performance of assigned Web search tasks on mobile phone while moving through nine varied but typical urban situations. Notably, we discovered up to eight-fold differentials between micro-level measurements of atten-tional resource fragmentation, for example from spans of over 16 seconds in a laboratory condition dropping to bursts of just a few seconds in difficult mobile situations. By cali-brating perceptual sampling, reducing resources from tasks of secondary importance, and resisting the impulse to switch tasks before finalization, participants compensated for the resource depletion. The findings are compared to previous studies in office contexts. The work is valuable in many areas of HCI dealing with mobility.

The Internet has been a great success in the fixed world, whereas WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), the mobile Internet, has not fulfilled its promise. However, now the analysts have started to believe in a rise of the mobile Internet again. WAP 2.0, with XHTML Mobile Profile as its standard language, will enable sites to function both in the fixed and wireless worlds. In this paper, we analyze different ways to navigate XHTML sites with mobile phones and base our analysis on two usability evaluations with a total of 30 subjects from various countries. The results show that due to limitations of mobile devices (the limited display size, pointing methods, and bandwidth), not all navigation guidelines of the fixed Internet are applicable to the mobile Internet. It is important for developers to realize the effect of these limitations in order to build usable XHTML sites also for mobile use.