Mapping Our Emotional Attachment to Digital and Non-digital Artefacts

In this study, four interviews were carried out on four female informants to investigate the scope and range of our emotional attachment to both digital and non-digital artefacts. Two of the females chosen were 20-25 years old and two were 50-55 years old to gauge differences, if any, in generational influences technology may have over our emotional attachment. The method used in all four interviews was the Repertory Grid Technique. Each informant was asked to identify four digital and four non-digital artefacts that would then be rated on a 5 point likert scale. The triadic procedure was used to illicit a set of eight fixed constructs that were then designed and tested prior to the interviews, ensuring the stability of the various components. The two main questions two be answered in this experiment were:

In which ways are people emotionally attached to digital and non-digital artefacts?
Are there differences between how we feel about digital and non-digital artefacts?

The data gathered was also used in the paper My grandfather’s iPod: an investigation of emotional attachment to digital and non-digital artefacts by Phil and Susan Turner (2011).