User experience studies of personal cloud storage services

Nowadays, individuals’ data is at their disposal in real time from any device with the assistance of cloud storage services (CSS, e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud and Google Drive). Success of cloud computing in an enterprise ultimately depends on delivering user experience (UX) which delivers business applications anytime and anywhere, and on any device that user prefers. CSSs empower new kind of collaborations between individuals and have fundamental impact on how we organize and share our data. Despite an increasing popularity of cloud computing among researchers and academia, and vast variety of CSSs offered to the end users by cloud computing, the literature on UX studies of these services is quite restricted. This master’s thesis studies UX of different CSSs (with focus on Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud) based on 10 interviews and 65 Web survey responses. We analysed the data qualitatively and quantitatively. The results consist of reasons for the most positive and negative experiences and descriptions of current habits and motivations of the CSS users. As the current use of CSSs is still mostly individual, we also investigated the potential of taking the UX of CSSs to the next level by integrating different social features to current CSSs. We conclude the thesis by explaining the significance of various Cloud UX aspects in the context of CSSs and proposing design implications for enhancing UX of CSSs