Experience design and writing for digital media

This work for the HDR in information and communication sciences proposes a theory of the experience of digital media to approach it from the point of view of digital writing. While the sociology of uses analyzes the visible part of digital interactions without intervening in them, from an objectivist perspective, studies on experience, which form a recent field in the SHS, are interested on the one hand in the way in which the experience of digital technologies writes its history in us, while we leave traces in the machines which constitute an inscription on them, the two types of writing being inseparable. On the other hand, studies on experience address the way in which the design choices of a technical device lead to cognitive consequences for the actors of this device.

Our contribution aims to propose a framework for studying the interactive experience from the study of the cognitive processes that manifest themselves in the speeches of human actors during the evaluation phase of the devices, and that it is possible to anticipate. during the design phase. We identify two types of cognitive processes related to digital writing: reflective and critical on the one hand, and objective on the other. We propose a stratigraphy of the interactive experience, inspired by the model of the three levels developed within the framework of the project PRECIP, which we discuss in particular in connection with the theory of activity, the theory of the actor network and the methods of ethnomethodology or the semiotics of screen writings.

After a presentation of this scriptural theory of experience, we propose applications of this approach in the following fields:

• training in digital writing and design;

• training in the search for information from traces;

• a system for raising awareness and cultural mediation;

• the design of a serious game.

Finally, we propose some lines of thought concerning the challenges of a collective reflexivity of digital writing for the design of public spaces.