Weston Baxter

A psychological ownership approach to designing object attachment

The mental state in which an individual claims an object as theirs is called psychological ownership. Psychological ownership is associated with motives, routes, affordances, and outcomes directly linked to attachment. This research introduces psychological ownership in the context of designing object attachment and identifies affordance principles that help facilitate it. A framework presenting the motives for and routes to psychological ownership is proposed to provide a holistic understanding of object attachment. In the framework each route to psychological ownership, that is, control, intimate knowledge, and self-investment, has a corresponding class of affordances. Overall a total of 16 affordance principles are identified through contextual inquiry with 4 objects (a car, a mobile phone, a pair of shoes, and a park bench). Previous studies have identified various elements of this framework but have fallen short of clearly defining and relating the motives, routes, and affordances to psychological ownership identified here. These affordance principles are readily mapped to experience design models and provide a practical resource for designers. Together, the framework and the affordances inform design decisions and move towards a prescriptive design method for facilitating object attachment.

Ownership by Design

Ownership is central to the successful design of many offerings. This is made more evident with large contextual shifts in terms of immaterial ownership, ownership by multiple users and time-dependent ownership. Psychological ownership theory links naturally to existing experience design models and is thus useful in approaching how to design for ownership. Designers should consider the motives and routes to ownership described by psychological ownership theory but also the paths to ownership formed through interaction with an object. The result is a new frame for design in which the objective is to create a possession, not simply an object. Designing an object, which is owned, means focusing on the interactions between a user and the object through the entire lifecycle including consideration of when an object enters and exits a person’s possessions. Within this new frame, there are at least four main ways in which designers can create intentional ownership experiences. Specifically, they can help give meaning to the ownership deprived experiences increasingly prevalent in modern digital and shared contexts; structure the ownership experience; reduce redundant effort made once an object is taken into a person’s possession; and mitigate contaminated interaction, which is likely to prevent ownership from occurring.