What is Experience Design?
"please define experience design in one sentence.
i have heard enough of why it cannot be done, so none of that please. is anyone up to it?"
From: Gunnar Swanson
I don't think you'll get much agreement on one sentence. Here are three stabs at how I think various people who embrace the phrase might define the term:
1) Planning of people's experiences with an institution, service, or product.
2) Design where the "product" of the design is ethereal enough that nobody can regard it as an object and everyone involved has to recognize that it's not about a thing.
3) Design with the understanding that it's not about a thing but rather
about the people who use things.
There's some overlap of meaning but each of the three has at least slightly different implications.
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
536 South Catalina Street
Ventura, California 93001-3625 USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
From: David Heller
Designing solutions that satisfy the full 360-degree range of contexts of the stakeholders within the system being designed for which accounts for but not limited to the usability, learnability, sense of pleasure/satisfaction, usefulness, throughout the entire flow of a system and not just limited to single applications that lie within it.
From: Sean McKay
Challis Hodge's definition is pretty solid:
Experience Design: concerned with the design of human interactions with controls over time and in the context of use.
"Experience Design Roles"
http://www.challishodge.com/models.html
Sean McKay
Principal, User Experience Director
VO2 Media, Inc.
www.vo2media.com
engage // empower // entertain
From: Sumrall, Derick
From David Kelley of IDEO:
Homemade cake versus Chuck E. Cheese...
a. In an agricultural economy, flour, eggs, sugar, etc. are the "raw" materials you need to prepare a cake and then you bake it.
b. In a productized economy, you go to the grocery store and buy a box cake from Duncan Hines. Add water and bake it.
c. In a service economy, you go to the bakery and pick up the cake.
d. In an experience economy, you take the birthday boy or girl to Chuck
E. Cheese. They supply the cake, games, photos, entertainment, etc. It's a package.
From: Abel Lenz
Experience design is a user-centered approach to the design of systems
for information manipulation and communication.
Break it down:
-- user-centered - the value of the product/activity is based on how it
is experienced
-- systems - includes deliverables and the rules that direct their
successful application to a goal
-- communciation and manipulation - authoring and consuming information.
There are a lot of critical patterns you can throw on top of those, but those are the foundation. Input/Output.
It's really most useful as a title now because it is largely free of existing industry references.
- Abel L. Lenz
- Director of User Experience, Founder
- New Tilt, Inc.
From: Margot Jacqz
Planning of people's experiences;
Design with the understanding that it's not about a thing but rather about the people who use things;
concerned with the design of human interactions with controls over time and in the context of use;
and Chuck E Cheese.
If once considers experience design as a sequence of events orchestrated to create a mood or an urge to buy, or provide pleasure (or not), at least some times components must be real, in an environment.
Is anyone out there interested in the physical architecture of an experience: the script, the set, the props, the materials, the colors; and how these elements are integral to defining "the brand" or otherwise achieving whatever result is desired?
Margot JACQZ
Architecture, Interiors, Environments
Roz Goldfarb Associates
207 West 25 4th fl
New York, NY 10001
http://www.rga-joblink.com
From: Karl Long
An interesting feature of Experience Design is that it did not evolve from a craft, discipline or medium, like graphic design or information design for instance.
This is a feature that I think makes it more difficult to define than architectural design, broadcast design, interior design, product design etc.
Many design disciplines are defined by what form the output takes.
I think in many ways Experience Design is a meta concept or philosophy that provides direction, vocabulary, and technique that can enable multiple disciplines to work together in a unified manner.
I had previously tried to create some definitions of experience design that differentiated strategic aims from tactical aims:
Strategic Experience design: the process used to define, drive or inform the orchestration of the organizations products, behaviors, communications, environments across multiple tasks/activities/contexts and partners.
Experience Design: is a process through which an individual product or
service is designed to fit into the larger context of use.
http://experiencecurve.com/competition/archives/000018.html
karl
--
blog: http://experiencecurve.com/competition/
network: http://www.ryze.com/?a=mrkook
From: Brad Lauster
I'm going to play my cynic card and offer a definition of Experience
Design as I see it being used today:
Experience Design - A term used by Designers to describe design work that involves knowledge or skills typically attributed to more than one
discipline of design.
The cynical point here is that, today, people calling themselves Experience Designers aren't doing anything different than any other user-centered designer.
As far as I know, there are no methods or techniques unique to Experience Design. It's simply a term used to indicate a knowledge of, or willingness to work in multiple design disciplines.
--Brad Lauster
http://bradlauster.typepad.com/e2/
From: Dan Saffer
I've always thought that experience design was an umbrella term that contained many different design and creative disciplines (such as communication design, copywriting, sound design, industrial design, environmental design, interaction design, information architecture, etc.) all working towards the creation of a unified experience for a user throughout the many possible "touchpoints" with a product.
For me at least, it's similar to what used to be called (and still is in some industries) creative direction.
Dan Saffer
M.Des. Candidate, Interaction Design
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.odannyboy.com
From: Lydia Thornley
My own experience is that design, and particularly branding, problems involve a range of expertise visual, verbal, behavioural and technical.
It's in the crossover between disciplines the sparring between people who think in very different ways that conventions are challenged and new ways found of doing things.
In branding, I suppose the definition of experience design [though I hesitate to use the term because it sounds like jargon] is the creation of consistent experience of an organisation at every point of contact.
In raw terms, the way I explain this to clients is, "It's no good putting a logo on your letterhead that says 'we're friendly and approachable' and then writing a letter that sounds like it comes from a totalitarian state".
LT
From: Paul Gilbert
ED should be what it sounds like.
The design of the aggregate experience of a brand, i.e.: The multiplicity of communications, the products and services, the physical and mental spaces, the values, the emotions and the culture of the brand.
From: Susan-Jillian Smith
Creating a design that feels natural to the people using it. Software, appliances, any device that starts to be an extension of your thinking.
A tall order considering that there is nothing natural about using a computer or running the software that you need to do your job - but after so many hundreds of years of using pencils or pens we don't think about how we hold our pencil or what a marvel a ball point pen is. We just expect it will work in a particular way.
I wouldn't dismiss the term "Experience Design" as jargon - instead it is a way to bridge the knowledge gap we have about making something seem perfectly normal in everyday life. Words and terminology can be critical to the evolution of any idea and I think ED has jump started our imagination in a new way that is very exciting.
susan
Multidiscipline design
