Participation User Experience: A Call to Better Manage the Most Important Resource in User-Centered Design

Participating users are the foundation of user-centered design. However, there is a limited understanding of their motivation, engagement, and experience participating in research. In this work, we propose the concept of Participation User Experience (PUX), which addresses participants’ experiences in user-centered design. To set a scope for PUX, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis on workshop data involving 20 experienced user-centered design practitioners and researchers. The analysis yielded five themes, making explicit aspects of PUX that have been implicitly considered and how their consideration could be improved. Great potential lies in addressing intrinsic motivations over extrinsic incentives and developing more structured approaches to planning and measuring PUX to mitigate various sources of bias related to incentives or Experimenter Effects. We contribute to a first understanding of PUX, point to persisting research gaps, and present practical implications for improving participants’ experiences in user-centered design.

Conference paper