The starting point for developing teaching abilities is the experiences that you have of the object of learning. To prepare student teachers for teaching technology in a digital-intensive society, research related to their experiences of phenomenon such as programmed technological artefacts is important. A phenomenon that they in their future technology teaching implement as a learning object. Therefore, more knowledge is needed about student teachers understanding of programmed technological artefacts in everyday life.To describe the different ways in which student teachers experience programmed technological artefacts, such as elevators, tumble dryers, traffic lights, and keyboards, we used a phenomenographic approach. Semi-structured interviews with eight student teachers in primary teacher education were conducted to find the variation in their experiences. This resulted in experiences described as: 1) the physical interface, 2) components as parts of a process, 3) connected, controlled, and regulated components, and 4) components as and in a system.Aspects essential for understanding programmed technological artefacts are related to computational thinking, systems thinking and the dual nature of technology. For student teachers to understand these artefacts, aspects from all three dimension need to be discerned. A problem is that student teachers in this study discerned only a few aspects of the phenomenon that they themselves will be teaching about.