It's Fun to do Things Together: Two Cases of Explorative User Studies

This paper describes two explorative user studies conducted in a research project called Maypole. The purpose of the first user study was to understand how children thought communication with personal technologies could be fun. The second study focused on what children thought was fun in taking and editing digital images. In both studies, children aged 7–12 were given existing personal technologies to use in their own environment for one week. After that, a focus group was held with the children in order to discuss what they thought was fun in using the technologies.

The results of the two user studies illustrate how fun in using personal technologies could relate to a user's social behaviour, and not only to human-computer interaction. Therefore, designers are encouraged to explore further the social aspects of fun in their creations. Moreover, the two studies illustrate some methodological problems in studying a user's experience of fun, which refer to a need for more public research on methods.