“Dad Bought Another Toy”: Meaning Making and Emotions with Tablets

The paper examines the interplay between meaning and emotion during the interaction with tablets. Following the interpretive case study approach, we examine users’ meaning making as the context of use changes from the business context to the personal environment, trailing users’ interpretation of the tablet and their overall experience, in order to detect changes in their feeling states and understand their emotional experience with the IT artifact. Having examined mainly on-the-go professionals, our findings illustrate that the tablet is considered as a compelling device, being interpreted simultaneously as an extension of the office environment, while being mobile or at home, as a multimedia and content consumption station and as communal device, awarding or strengthening the social character of group activities. In addition, the findings suggest that users develop an attachment to the device, by either personalizing it and approaching it as a companion, or by attributing to it a symbolic significance, by recognizing a value in its expressive characteristics and assessing as a ‘possession to own’. Our findings demonstrate that, as the tablet moves from the business to the home environment, gradually losing its utilitarian purpose, changes in feeling states become more significant and the emotional experience intensifies.