Let users tell the story: evaluating user experience with experience reports

User experience (UX) has been under extensive research in recent years. One of the key questions has been how to evaluate user experience. Several methods such as diaries, experience sampling and questionnaires have been used for collecting data on user experience with a product. Although these methods provide valuable data, they may lack obtaining rich descriptions of UX in users' everyday lives. We have approached the question of UX evaluation by experience reports which are open-ended experience stories written by the users after using their products in real contexts of use. In this paper, we describe a field study in which 21 participants wrote 116 experience reports about UX with their personal products such as smart phones and MP3 players. The reports were analyzed with predefined context and experience categorizations to identify core experiences. We discuss our initial findings on the applicability of the method to evaluate UX.