L’expérience du courriel en situation professionnelle : représentations de l’activité, jugements et affects

• Main Author: Nadia Gauducheau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Recherche et Pratique sur les Activités 2012-10-01
• Series: Activités
• Subjects: user experience; professional activity; electronic mail; affects; representations
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/activites/345

The objective of the paper is to describe the experience of email usage at work. Twenty five interviews inspired by “explicitation” and “self-confrontation” techniques were carried out with employees of a professional training company. These interviews allowed us to identify three dimensions of user experience: the representations of email activity, judgments on email (advantages, disadvantages) and the affects elicited by email usage. The analysis shows that the negative experience of users is linked to three phenomena. Firstly, the use of email is often associated with making it more difficult to control work activity. Secondly, email exchanges are seen as violating social and communicative rules. Finally, a lack of self-efficacy is sometimes experienced by users.