On the ground running: Lessons from experience design

Towards the design experience

None of the shifts outlined on page 1 have gone unnoticed by the broader digital design profession. Whether the emergence of a self-conscious experience design community reflects a canny land-grab on the part of a few visible and influential practitioners, or an underlying recognition that our technosocial practices have transcended the rather limited model of the user, it's proven to be a popular way of describing a more expansive view of design. In 2001, an AIGA conference defined experience design as being concerned with a product's “entire lifecycle with a customer, from before they first perceive the need, to when they discard it.” In the years since, the discourse of experience design has offered a way to wrestle with the new complexity of the built environment and the networked objects we encounter in it. (In this, it parallels the emergence of actor-network theory in the academy, a line of thought that accounts for interactions between extended networks of people, ideas, technologies and artifacts.)

In 1956 Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (father of Eero) said that things should always be designed with reference to their “next larger context.” Experience design would appear to incorporate this recognition from the beginning, which would certainly better position it to respond to the manifold challenges of design for a networked world than more tactical arts such as product or web design.

But it turns out that experience design, as it is currently conceived, does not always lead to successful experiences. Ensuring that all phases and aspects of someone's interaction with a product/service ecology align with a singular vision requires a large degree of control. This, in turn, leaves little room for the self-evident (and lovely) messiness of our lives, and not much in the way of flexibility should the scenario of use deviate to any significant degree from that contemplated at design time.

As it happens, another Apple product provides a perfect illustration of the potential pitfalls involved in such overly designed experiences—the cross-branded Nike+ iPod Sport Kit.

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