What is user engagement? A conceptual framework for defining user engagement with technology

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to critically deconstruct the term engagement as it applies to peoples' experiences with technology. Through an extensive, critical multidisciplinary literature review and exploratory study of users of Web searching, online shopping, Webcasting, and gaming applications, we conceptually and operationally defined engagement. Building on past research, we conducted semistructured interviews with the users of four applications to explore their perception of being engaged with the technology. Results indicate that engagement is a process comprised of four distinct stages: point of engagement, period of sustained engagement, disengagement, and reengagement. Furthermore, the process is characterized by attributes of engagement that pertain to the user, the system, and user-system interaction. We also found evidence of the factors that contribute to nonengagement. Emerging from this research is a definition of engagement a term not defined consistently in past work as a quality of user experience characterized by attributes of challenge, positive affect, endurability, aesthetic and sensory appeal, attention, feedback, variety/novelty, interactivity, and perceived user control. This exploratory work provides the foundation for future work to test the conceptual model in various application areas, and to develop methods to measure engaging user experiences.

Barriers to and Facilitators of Engagement With Remote Measurement Technology for Managing Health: Systematic Review and Content Analysis of Findings (Preprint)

“…Many of the factors discovered are consistent with the 'engagement attributes' previously reported by O'Brien and Toms [3] in their model for engagement with technology. They described a dynamic model, where 'engagement' is a continual cycle of engagement, disengagement, and re-engagement that persists over time.…”

“…Engagement has been operationalised as a multistage process involving the point of engagement, a period of sustained engagement, disengagement, and reengagement [3] and is defined as the extent and manner in which people actively use resources (Smith, Ploderer, Wadley, Webber & Borland, 2017). Many factors may influence this engagement process at different time points.…”

Analyzing the Role of Interactivity in User Experience

“…Indeed, UX has been associated with a wide variety of meanings ranging from traditional usability to beauty, hedonic, affective and experiential aspects of technology use (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky 2006;Law & Van Schaik 2010;Forlizzi & Batterbee 2004), including aesthetics, immersion, and presence (Kumar & Garg 2010). O'Brien & Toms (2008) distinguish user experience as a longer-term view from user engagement which reflects a more short-term, affect related experience of use which is pertinent to this study. In their review, Bargas-Avila and Hornbaek (2011) distinguish between 'generic UX' qualitative studies which take a contextual approach to interpreting experience; and dimensional, quantitative studies that aim to understand how the phenomenon of UX might be measured and composed.…”

Methods for Evaluating Interactive Information Retrieval Systems with Users

“…O'Brien and Toms describe how the theory of engagement shares some attributes with flow, aesthetic, play and information interaction theories, but state that it is fundamentally different from these theories. O'Brien and Toms [205] provide a conceptual framework for defining user engagement and have also developed a procedure for measuring user engagement [206].…”