Repurposive appropriation is a creative everyday act in which a user invents a novel use for information technology (IT) and adopts it. This study is the first to address its prevalence and predictability in the consumer IT context. In all, 2,379 respondents filled in an online questionnaire on creative uses of digital cameras, such as using them as scanners, periscopes, and storage media. The data reveal that such creative uses are adopted by about half of the users, on average, across different demographic backgrounds. Discovery of a creative use on one's own is slightly more common than is learning it from others. Most users discover the creative uses either completely on their own or wholly through learning from others. Our regression model explains 34% of the variance in adoption of invented uses, with technology cognizance orientation, gender, exploration orientation, use frequency, and use tenure as the strongest predictors. These findings have implications for both design and marketing.
This paper discusses and evaluates the application of a social psychologically enriched, user-centered approach to agent architecture design. The major aim is to facilitate human-agent interaction (HAI) by making agents not only algorithmically more intelligent but also socially more skillful in communicating with the user. A decision-making model and communicative argumentation strategies have been incorporated into the agent architecture. In the presented content resource management experiments, enhancement of human task performance is demonstrated for users that are supported by a persuasive agent. This superior performance seems to be rooted in a more trusting collaborative relationship between the user and the agent, rather than in the appropriateness of the agent's decision-making suggestions alone. In particular, the second experiment demonstrated that interface interaction design should follow the principles of taskorientation and implicitness. Making the influence of the agent too salient can trigger counterintentional effects, such as users' discomfort and psychological reactance.
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