Five factors of meaningful design
By: Marc Ericson Santos
Tags: Design, User Experience, Meaning, Product Design, Customer Experience

As creators, we pride ourselves with products that people love. We help users get things done while enjoying the sleekest interfaces that technology has to offer. We enrich their lives with our content. We introduce them to new services and gain their loyalty through the trustworthy relationship that we build. As for our clients, we are partners in achieving their target sales and KPIs thus illustrating the value of a well-executed design.

In the past decades, good interaction between humans and computers has developed to include usability, satisfaction, and other positive emotions, among others. Our understanding of good interaction is still evolving. More recently, there is an ongoing discussion on how the design of technology and services impact the human experience of meaning. Mekler and Hornbaek summarizes the conversation on this topic and proposed a framework for the experience of meaning in interaction design.

Meaning in psychology research

To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

The psychological aspects of meaning have a long history in existentialist and positive psychology. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and founder of logotheraphy, was among the first to emphasize man’s need for meaning — that finding value in life is essential even at times of suffering. Around the same time, Maslow argued that people want to lead meaningful lives by cultivating their talents. People have a need to realize their full potential — their self-actualization.

From these schools of thought, research on the subjective experiences of meaning emerged. Based on empirical evidence, people do have a tendency to perceive meaning in their lives. This perceived meaning shields them against stress on well-being and contributes to their happiness. When this meaning is shaken by distressing life events, people are motivated to recreate meaning in their lives.

Framework for the experience of meaning

Mekler and Hornbaek draws upon insights in psychology research (but not cover its entirety) to create a framework applicable to issues in human-computer interaction. In their framework of the experience of meaning, they identified five interrelated components of meaning — connectedness, coherence, purpose, resonance, and significance.

The five factors of meaning — The four components require connectedness. Without connectedness, people will not perceive coherence, purpose, significance, nor resonance. Conversely, the four components enable people to create more connections as they understand their experiences in the context of their life. They discover new goals and discern what matters to them.

Connectedness: The experience should connect to the person. Coherence: The experience should make sense. Purpose: The experience should lead to a goal. Resonance: The experience should feel right. Significance: The experience should matter.

For an experience to be meaningful, it should connect to the user on a personal level. Meaning exists through the connection with the various aspects of the self, the people around us, and the world we live in. If an experience didn’t connect with us, then we wouldn’t resonate with it, we wouldn’t make sense of it, and we wouldn’t find any purpose or significance to it. This highlights the importance of user research and ethnographic studies because people’s experience of meaning varies according to culture, life experiences, beliefs, and ideologies.

Coherence is necessary for resonance, purpose, and significance. If an experience doesn’t make sense, then it wouldn’t feel right. We would also not discern a clear goal nor perceive why the experience matters.

Coherence, purpose, and significance are derived from reflecting on our experiences. People reflect on coherence when they ask “What am I doing?” and “What is happening to me?” They experience coherence when they find sensible answers. Coherence is disrupted when people undergo distressing life events like losing a loved one or being laid off from a job despite doing well. They gain a heightened awareness of the unfairness of life and how it doesn’t make sense.

“Why am I doing this?” and “Does doing this matter?” reflects on purpose and significance, respectively. Having goals is a way for people to construct and ascribe meaning in their lives. Answering these questions enables people to connect their experiences into overarching themes. These themes should matter beyond their individual selves thereby making their existence non-trivial and precious.

A key to coherence, purpose, and significance is reflection which could be a target for meaningful design. Some studies explain that meaning arises from reflection while others highlight its role for making sense of one’s identity and determining what is important to them. One approach is slow design which encourages users to take more time on the part of the interaction that are meaningful.

Unlike the previous three, resonance is intuitive and spontaneous. Not all moments of meaning are brought about by deliberate reflection. There are experiences that are intuitively meaningful; profound moments in life when everything makes sense and feels right. Examples would be tiny epiphanies we get from listening to a song, or the feeling we get gazing at a beautiful sunset.

Examples: Blogging and Online Courseware

Interactive technologies do not need to afford experiences of meaning in every case. There are less needs when dealing with hedonic experiences — ones that people pursue for relaxation and short-term pleasure. On the other hand, eudaimonically motivated activities, ones that people do to follow their personal ideals, are areas for meaningful design.

An example is blogging. People write to express themselves and connect with other people. Finishing an article could be a goal in itself. Some target a specific number of page views and followers. When writing, bloggers sometimes enter a state of flow. Ideas transfer from their minds to the slick computer screen effortlessly — an inexplicable high. From time to time, they receive criticisms from online trolls that do not make sense. Yet, they carry on with sharing their ideas because they believe that their content matters to their readers.

Another example is taking an open courseware. People who take these courses are highly-motivated to improve their knowledge or gain a new skill. Studying this particular topic would enable them to improve in the work they are passionate about, or help them switch careers. From time to time, there are lessons they couldn’t understand and quizzes they couldn’t pass. However, when they do finally understand, they experience an unexplainable contentment from mastering a new concept. With the help of mentors and classmates, they could graduate from the course armed with their new skills.

Taking into account users’ experience of meaning in blogging and open courseware, designers could consider how else they could support connectedness, coherence, purpose, significance, and resonance. From interface and content design to moderating the social aspects of the experience, it is possible to generate new insights to make the product better.