Living the Experience Design

Finally we started working with our Young Enterprise teams.

As we are designing a very simple series of objects – I will not tell you which kind of they are, I will call them “k-tools” – we decided to have our first official meeting in a location which was perfect to have a User Experience. We are designers, but first of all everyone of us is a user. To be precise, in that case I was the user ^_^, and the other team-members were the observers.

I acted like I was at my home, even if I wasn’t, because as we have to be strong in problem solving, fist of all we have to see the problems to solve. In this spot we had to visualize which problems I had to face during the whole experience, and which k-tools I should need to simplify my experience and make it better.

We found the meeting really useful, and we came up with with many problems as well as many solutions for each of them.

I went home and started to find information about the Experience Design: I found a massive number of documents and slides.

What is Experience Design? Here are some definitions.

“Experience design (XD) is the practice of Experience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions.An emerging discipline, experience design draws from many other disciplines including cognitive psychology and perceptual psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, architecture and environmental design, haptics, hazard analysis, product design, theatre, information design, information architecture, ethnography, brand strategy, interaction design, service design, storytelling, heuristics, technical communication, and design thinking products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user exExperience design (XD) is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions. An emerging discipline, experience design draws from many other disciplines including cognitive psychology and perceptual psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, architecture and environmental design, haptics, hazard analysis, product design, theatre, information design, information architecture, ethnography, brand strategy, interaction design, service design, storytelling, heuristics, technical communication, and design thinkingperience and culturally relevant solutions. An emerging discipline, experience design draws from many other disciplines including cognitive psychology and perceptual psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, architectureand environmental design, haptics, hazard analysis, product design, theatre, information design, information architecture, ethnography, brand strategy, interaction design, service design,storytelling, heuristics, technical communication, and design thinking” (source:  Wikipedia)

I found many definitions of User Experience Design, referred to the digital design, which is not our issue for the Young Enterprise project, but it is necessary to know what it is to prevent some kind of misunderstanding.

“User experience (abbreviated as UX) is how a person feels when interfacing with a system. The system could be a website, a web application or desktop software and, in modern contexts, is generally denoted by some form of human-computer interaction (HCI). Those who work on UX (called UX designers) study and evaluate how users feel about a system, looking at such things as ease of use, perception of the value of the system, utility, efficiency in performing tasks and so forth.” (source: UXdesign)

Nathan Shedroff wrote a book about Experience Design, and in its introduction he tells that “In particular, the elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which make them designable.” He also writes that “Many see it only as a field for digital media,” (but that is UX, AN) “while others view it in broad-brush terms that encompass traditional, established, and other such diverse disciplines as theater, graphic design, storytelling, exhibit design, theme-park design, online design, game design, interior design, architecture, and so forth.” 

Nathan also describes some rules about ED, which are Time/Duration, Interactivity, Intensity, Breadth/Consistency, Sensorial and Cognitive Triggers, and Significance/Meaning. (source: http://www.nathan.com/ed/)

I verily agree with Nathan, I found his words strongly instructive and formative. The Experience Design is the key to the Contemporary Design, if it is digital or not. Understand by the six steps the needs and problems of the customers/ users is the only way to prototype and brand.

But there is something more. By googling “Experience Design” I also found the Experience Design Manifesto , which is extremely interesting and innovative.

It declares that “The ultimate aim of all creative activity is to bring happiness to people’s lives. Happiness is an emotion that comes in result of positive experiences and affects human beings.” It gives also some rules sbout the Experiences which, to foster happiness, should:

• “Make people feel confident of themselves.
• Make people feel they can do something better. Empowers people to do something in a better way.
• Improve people’s lives helping to solve existing pragmatic problems
• Make people have an enjoyable and fun time during the experience, thus making life worth to be lived.
• Surprises people in a magic way, bringing delight to the eyes and making the mind wonder.
• Create an emotional connection between everyone involved, the experience itself and the one supporting the experience (a brand or a person)
• Make the world a better place to live
• Strenghten relationships between people that live the same experience”

Admittedly it could be argued that those rules were not much related to reality, but the results of our tem meeting and my experience was indeed connected to many them:  “Improve people’s lives helping to solve existing pragmatic problems” is the one more appropriated, because we found a lot of practical problems, and our solutions are all bound for solving them; “Make the world a better place to live” could seem the more abstracted rule, but if it is considered that the new tendences of design are all leant to eco-compatibility, environmental preservation and recycle-sensitive solutions, it could be found as one the fundamental points.

If an “experience designer must love and care about people and the world in which we all live.” I am really proud to be it.