First Impression as a Dynamic Experience: An Interview-Based Study of Impression Formation and Change

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to develop a conceptual framework and interview method to capture the first impression of the product as part of the dynamics of user experience. Based on a literature review on first impressions and user experience, this dissertation suggested a framework for the relationship among before-use impression, actual use, recommendation behavior, and users underlying frame. The semi-structured interview method named the First Impression Elicitation Method (FIEM) was developed here to characterize the first impression relevant to the product, which is grounded in the aforementioned framework. The major components of FIEM were the user impression before, during, and after use, and the underlying frame of users. This method was composed of five steps: preparing, evaluating the before-use impression, evaluating the during-use impression, extracting the underlying frame, and evaluating the after-use impression. Prior to applying this method, two exploratory studies were conducted to examine ways to solve two major issues in the analysis of interview data with the purpose of understanding the user experience. Study 1 showed the need for deriving keywords without the hierarchical categorization by comparing the results generated from hierarchical and non-hierarchical processing of the interview data. Study 2 revealed the need for deriving keywords in terms of common and distinct aspects between the major components or categories that comprise the interview. With due consideration to the results of Study 1 and 2, Study 3 was conducted to investigate the validity of FIEM and identify the first impression of cleaners, based on the purposed method. Study 3 compared the top-ranked keywords derived from FIEM and Amazon reviews in order to demonstrate the generalization of FIEM. This study characterized the first impression relevant to the cleaners by deriving the common and distinct keywords among the before-, during-, and after-use impressions. The results provided a comprehensive consensus with previous studies on the first impressions of products, ensuring the usefulness of FIEM. This dissertation showed several practical and academic implications. It attempted to explain the user experience components, focusing on continuous time spans, both from the macro and micro perspectives. It also provided a systemic method to researchers who are willing to employ unstructured data for investigating user experience, from data collection to analysis. In addition to these implications, it will help designers to develop concepts that can meet to the goals of company and achieve the intended impression, by providing a basis for their decision-making. The FIEM can also serve as a research tool to gain an overall perception on a particular product, and to determine users real desire to the products. However, despite practical implications, this dissertation was limited because it applied the proposed method to a particular type of product (i.e., a functional product). Thus, further research on diverse product types is needed to utilize the FIEM effectively.