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Abstract
Recent studies of information and communication technologies as diverse as mobile phones, video games and computers have revealed the centrality of control issues to users. But although researchers have highlighted the centrality of control as a concept in understanding user experiences of digital technology, studies have not sufficiently prioritized the experience. Findings about control have been mostly tangential. We contend that a salient and central feature of our use of digital technologies is our experience of control, and a more robust understanding of this experience – and whether it is misplaced – is urgently necessary in our contemporary, highly networked society. In answer to this need, we have undertaken a qualitative study into user experiences of control. Our starting conjecture is that the more competent a technology's functional and perceived affordances, the greater the experience of user control. We draw on Rex Hartson's schema of technological affordances, which refer to the way in which technologies allow us to accomplish things in the world. Our findings indicate that Hartson's schema is useful as a starting point for categorizing different experiences of control, but needs to be modified and expanded. In addition to these two types of affordance, findings also indicate that users experience control issues in relation to what we term maintenance affordances, or the need to keep the technology going, and contextual affordances, or the abilities granted by the context of use.
Notes
For example, so-called spyware, surreptitiously downloaded to a user's computer during a visit to a website, modifies functionality of that user's computer environment. Various forms of digital rights management prevent copying and other non-sanctioned uses.
Familiarity with digital screen devices does not end with the desktop computer – screens are omnipresent elsewhere in everyday life. PDAs, laptops and cell phones are becoming regular components of our daily interactions. In many ways, the smooth, lit surface of the screen allows for a comfortable fit between users and their technological counterparts. The user-friendly interface offered by the screen makes the world of digital operations accessible and visible to users, allowing far greater interaction than was every possible with cursor-based systems like DOS (Johnson Citation1997). But paradoxically, users are growing less aware of how these digital systems operate, and particularly, how digital code works to constrain, shape and tabulate their interactions. The screen contributes to the visible tactility of computers – the newest mobile devices such as the iPhone and Touch iPod forecast the intensification of this trend. Yet it does little to remedy the obscurity of the computer's inner workings. As screen-interfaced digital technologies become embedded in everyday life, their capacity for various forms of digital control is likewise embedded.
Time also plays a role here. Two users felt they would be able to figure out a graphical interface if they had enough time to devote to the task. But often, as Lise puts it ‘at the time I encounter them, it's just not worth doing something’.
These comments make it clear that the technology itself was affecting their ability to perform certain functions, rather than their own skill or dexterity. Andrej goes so far as to attribute intelligence-lowering effects to his PDA: ‘When I'm without the external keyboard, then I have to take the stylus thing and try to be poking there like a chicken. And that actually lowers the IQ’. Darren attributed his loss of control to the manufacturer, in this case Microsoft: ‘Microsoft wants you to do it their way and it's frustrating because you know it can done another way with other software, but Microsoft wants to brainwash you into doing it the way they think it should be done’.
For instance, users express pleasurable control at not being bound by workplace restrictions. Luc describes the freedom he experiences at not needing to rely on the phones at the retail outlet where he works, which are not for personal use: ‘It just allows me to make the connections I need to make with my friends in my own time, as opposed to all the times I can remember having to find a payphone or waiting while someone else was on the phone. It allows me to just take control of that moment’. Amanda expresses a similar sense of control in terms of a teleology of technical development: ‘I don't have to run to a payphone or wait till I get home … I can do it on the spot, which is something that you really couldn't do before cell phones were invented, so that's what I like. I like the control of that’.
Interestingly, Laura remarks on the different contextual affordance of email compared to the phone, in this case robbing her of control: ‘I guess the time … like, it depends on his schedule, like when he can check it and stuff. But if I had just called him, then he could've just told me’.