In his paper entitled "Everyday robotics: robots as everyday objects", (Proceedings of the 2005 joint conference on Smart objects and ambient intelligence: innovative context-aware services: usages and technologies), Frederic Kaplan defined the notion of "Value Profiles" to describe how the experienced value of an object change over time:
"Experiences change the value of objects. In some cases, high expectancies are followed by disappointment. In others, unexpected qualities are discovered after a while. Time increase the historical value of some objects and make other obsolete. Such kind of evolution may be rapid. It takes only a few minutes to be excited or disappointed by an object. But it also involves long-term dynamics. In some cases, the same objects can continue to be used for many years. (...) A value profile is meant to capture in a single hypothetical curve the evolution of the experienced value of an object. Immediate value is characterized by the first minutes of interaction with the object. Short-term value corresponds to a time range that starts with the first days of usage and lasts for over a month. Eventually long term value is characteristic of the evolution over months and years."
Acoording to him, 9 features characterize the experience with objects and then contributes to the value profile: versatility, social orientation, network factor, investment, historical capacity, personalization, control types. Data mining techniques on examples led him to put the emphasis on historical capacity, social orientation, network effect and control type. He then interestingly represents hypothetical curves of various value profiles: fashionable clothe (a), a computer (b), a corkscrew (c) and a notebook (d):
Why do I blog this? although his point in the paper is to investigate the potential value profile of robots, I think the concept can be applied elsewhere and may interestingly be pertinent for discussing design problems. Would it be possible to create unusual value profiles (with spikes?) or take advantage of the existing value profiles to create new objects in different area?
For instance, the value profile of a Nabaztag is quite flat and spiky, depending on the moment you receive messages (or if the rabbit does tai chi movements). Would it be possible to have the equivalent of the notebook value profile? yes for sure if the historical capacity of the object could be raised (a la blogject, creating some positive history as described by Alexandra D.S.