Technologies, such as smartphones or wearables, take a central role in our daily lives. Making their use meaningful and enjoyable requires a better understanding of the prerequisites and underpinnings of positive experiences with such technologies. So far, a focus had been on the users themselves, that is, their individual goals, desires, feelings, and acceptance. However, technology is often used in a social context, observed by others or even used in interaction with others, and thus shapes social dynamics considerably. In the present paper, we start from the notion that meaningful and/or enjoyable experiences (i.e., wellbeing) are a major outcome of technology use. We investigate how these experiences are further shaped by social context, such as potential spectators. More specifically, we gathered private (while being alone) and public (while other people are present) positive experiences with technology and compared need fulfillment and affective experience. In addition, we asked participants to imagine a change in context (from private to public or public to private) and to report the impact of this change on experience. Results support the idea of particular social needs, such as relatedness and popularity, which are especially relevant and better fulfilled in public than in private contexts. Moreover, our findings show that participants experience less positive affect when imaginatively removing the present others from a formerly public interaction, i.e., when they imagine performing the same interaction but without the other people present. Overall, this underlines the importance of social context for Human-Computer Interaction practice and research. Practical implications relate to product development, e.g., designing interactive technologies that can adapt to context (changes) or allow for context-sensitive interaction sets. We discuss limitations related to the experimental exploration of social context, such as the method of data collection, as well as potential alternatives to address those limitations, such as diary studies.

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New work has been a topic for a few years now and the COVID-19 pandemic has brought this trend more into focus, i.e., working remotely became more popular. However, besides various advantages, there is the risk of loneliness in employees, which can negatively affect their work performance and mental health. Research in different domains suggests that social robots could reduce loneliness. Since we were interested in whether and how such findings are transferable to the office context, we developed and tested a concept for a social office robot. More specifically, we first conducted a cultural probes study with white-collar workers to gain information about workplace loneliness and its drivers. Second, we explored design possibilities for a social office robot in a focus group. Based on the results, we created a concrete concept, Luca, which we finally evaluated and optimized with the help of interviews with participants from various industries. The present work contributes to HRI research and practice, e.g., by providing design recommendations for the implementation of a social office robot. Future research could investigate the effectiveness of a social office robot intervention in field studies. Next to implications for research and practice, potential limitations are discussed.

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