Abstract

Transitions in people’s lives take shape in the roles they enact, and the environments they inhabit. In these transitions, people encounter the paradox of changing and unchanging happenings, occurring simultaneously at multiple channels with differing magnitudes, and through immediate and long-term interactions. In this multiplicity of dimensions, transitions bring complexity while they emerge, throughout their occurrence, and while they resolve. Dealing with this complexity oftentimes results in stress, decline in emotional and social qualities of experiences. Interactive products and service systems play an important role in transitional experiences, by providing support for people to hold on to during the transitions. However, they are not explicitly designed with transitions and their complexity in mind. In this paper, I introduced transitions heuristics stemming from the modes of transitions framework, to understand and act on the complexity behind transitions. Transition heuristics leads the inquiry to discover principles at work in the existing interactive products and services and unveils the functioning principles that transforms these products into transitional experiences. The discovery unveils four threads of transitional products: routine, performance, ritual and narrative, which encompass a hierarchical and concentric relation with each other.

Keywords

Interactive Products And Service Systems, Heuristics, Experience Design, Routine, Performance, Narrative, Ritual, Case Study, Analysis, Principles, Methods

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Jul 7th, 12:00 AM

Transitions Heuristics in the Pursuit of Well-being: Situating Interactive Products and Services in Transitions

Transitions in people’s lives take shape in the roles they enact, and the environments they inhabit. In these transitions, people encounter the paradox of changing and unchanging happenings, occurring simultaneously at multiple channels with differing magnitudes, and through immediate and long-term interactions. In this multiplicity of dimensions, transitions bring complexity while they emerge, throughout their occurrence, and while they resolve. Dealing with this complexity oftentimes results in stress, decline in emotional and social qualities of experiences. Interactive products and service systems play an important role in transitional experiences, by providing support for people to hold on to during the transitions. However, they are not explicitly designed with transitions and their complexity in mind. In this paper, I introduced transitions heuristics stemming from the modes of transitions framework, to understand and act on the complexity behind transitions. Transition heuristics leads the inquiry to discover principles at work in the existing interactive products and services and unveils the functioning principles that transforms these products into transitional experiences. The discovery unveils four threads of transitional products: routine, performance, ritual and narrative, which encompass a hierarchical and concentric relation with each other.

 

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