By: Leilani Bruce
This week I read an article by Venkatesh et al titled ‘User Acceptance of Information Technology Toward a United View,’ which helped explain how different people view technology. Technology has expanded and grown very quickly over the years and sometimes it can be hard for people to understand their individual acceptance with technology.
This article's main goal is to explain a theory for users' intentions of technology, Venkatesh called the theory the ‘Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology’ (UTAUT.) This theory includes factors that help give a better understanding of user perception and acceptance behavior. These eight factors include performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, behavioral intention, facilitating conditions, performance expectancy, use behavior and of use. All of these factors play an important role in determining how people view and interact with technology, but there were a few that stood out to me.
The first one that stood out to me is effort expectancy(EE). This can be defined as how much ease one has with technology. Effort expectancy is a critical part of technology acceptance and demonstrates ease of use, complexity, and perceived ease of use. An example of someone who fits into this category would be a younger (twenty -thirty year olds) individual in today's society since they grew up surrounded by technology, however an elderly person may not fit into this category since they had to be taught how to use technology and oftentimes struggle with it.
Next I learned about performance expectancy(PE) and this refers to the degree to which a person looks at technology as a system that will help them get a job. This one was very interesting to me since it seems like these groups of people only use technology if it can help them in a job setting. Another example of someone who might fit in this category are people that do not necessarily depend on technology, but will use it if needed.
Lastly, the social influence (SI) factor relates to people who know the importance of technology. In this category, people who understand that technology is used for so many good things in the world and view technology as a positive, not a negative.
These three stood out to me because I believe I can relate to these the most. I relate to effort expectancy because I feel I do have the most ease when it comes to technology. I was lucky enough to grow up in the time where technology really started emerging. I grew up learning how to use it and have taken classes that focused on learning new features that technology has to offer. I relate to performance expectancy because I feel like I am surrounded by some family members that do not rely on technology, only when they need to. For example my grandma is a huge conspiracy theorist and always thinks that technology is a negative thing and will be the development that ends us yet at her job she is forced to use technology. This can also relate to older family members that did not grow up with this vast technology but they adapt when needed. Lastly, I relate to social influence because I definitely see technology as a positive more than a negative, and believe it has helped our society in a big way. Technology brought family and friends together, improved medical treatment, and frankly made our lives easier.
Overall, Venkatesh had a vision on how to categorize individuals and how they view the use of technology, and I think the categories are fairly accurate and different enough to fit people into these categories, and I do think that everyone can be placed into one specific category, but I also strongly believe that someone can fit into multiple.
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