Pragmatic versus Hedonic: Determining the Dominant Quality in User Experience for Professional and Leisure Collaboration Tools

As collaborative technologies become integral in both professional and leisurely settings, especially during the rise of remote work and digital communities due to COVID-19, understanding the user experience (UX) factors is critical. This study aims to explore the differential importance of these UX factors across professional and leisure contexts, leveraging the widespread use of collaboration tools for an in-depth analysis. The objective of the study is to identify and assess key UX factors in collaboration tools, and to quantify their differential impact in professional and leisure settings. Our research underscores the nuanced role of context in evaluating User Experience (UX) factors’ importance in collaboration tools, with significant variances observed across professional and leisure settings. While some UX factors, including accessibility, clarity, and intuitive use, maintained universal importance across contexts and tools, others—specifically dependability and efficiency—co ntradicted assumptions of being universal "hygiene factors", demonstrating the complexity of UX evaluations. This complexity necessitates a differentiated approach for each context and collaboration tool type, challenging the possibility of a singular evaluation or statement.