Towards an integrated framework to measure user engagement with interactive or physical products

Building great products or services is not easy; users want products and services that exceed their expectations and evolve with their needs; it is not just about building the right features. Knowing the user engagement (UE) towards a physical, virtual product or service can give valuable information that could be used as feedback for the design, enhancing its chances of success. In the context of user-centered design, UE is the assessment of the user experience characterized by the study of the individual’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral response to some stimulus, such as a product, a service, or a website. UE considers not only the users’ requirements and wishes but also their perceptions and reactions during and after an interaction with a product, system, or service. Many studies looking to quantify the UE are available. Still, a framework that provides a generic view of the most commonly used methods and metrics to measure UE does not yet exist in the literature. Aiming to understand the UE better, in this research, we developed a conceptual framework summarizing the available metrics and techniques used across different contexts, including good practices of self-report methods and physiological approaches. We expect this study will allow future researchers, developers, and designers to consider the UE as one of the most prominent product/service success indicators and use this guideline to find the more appropriate method, technique, and metric for its measurement.