Experience Design

The most eloquent description of Experience Design I’ve read comes not from the design world but from a New York City restaurant reviewer named Gael Greene. In an interview with Matthew Goodman in the June 2001 issue of Brill’s Content, she said:

“I thought a restaurant review should describe what your experience was like from the moment you called to make a reservation. Were they rude? Did they laugh at you for trying to get a table? … ”

That’s what it’s all about: the complete experience, beginning to end, from the screen to the store, to the ride and beyond.

Nathan Shedroff, "The Making of a Discipline: The Making of a Title," Boxes and Arrows, 11 Mar 2002.

Only where love and need are one

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Robert Frost, “Two Tramps In Mud Time,” A Further Range, Published/Written in 1936.

Refered to in Dewittt Jones, Extrraordinary Visions!, DVD, www.dewittjones.com

the next competitive battleground

"Customer experience is the next competitive battleground. It's where business is going to be won or lost."
- Tom Knighton, Forum Corp.

Fast Company's Fast Take newsletter, 20 Oct 2004

"What are y'all doin' here?"

With more than 40 agencies vying for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau account, Bruce Turkel, head of his eponymous Coconut Grove, Florida, ad agency, knew his team would need more than Armani suits and slick visuals to win the bake-off.

Their goal: Learn what makes tourism in the region hotter than Biloxi in August. Their strategy: Rent a 31-foot Winnebago, equip it with computers and art supplies, and hit the highway for five nights of field research. No focus groups, no clipboard-toting researchers accosting folks in malls. "We tried traditional research," says Turkel, "but it wasn't enough. We needed to know why people go there and what they experience."

At night, the Turkel team would stop at RV parks, set up lawn chairs, pop open a cooler of beer, and start jamming on guitars and harmonica. As folks wandered by, they'd offer up drinks and ask, "What are y'all doin' here?"

Linda Tischler, "Road Rules," Fast Company, Nov 2004.

still looking through a little display window

"We have a thousand times more disc space and a thousand times more computer power, but we're still looking through a little display window that's essentially the same as it was 10 years ago," said Adrian Geisow, manager of displays research at HP Labs.

Scarlet Pruitt, "HP offers peek at future computer monitors," Computer world, 19 Oct 2004 via Tomalak's

The Power Of Design

With corporations increasingly desperate to get in touch with their customers, IDEO's services are in growing demand. As the economy shifts from the economics of scale to the economics of choice and as mass markets fragment and brand loyalty disappears, it's more important than ever for corporations to improve the "consumer experience." Yet after decades of market research and focus groups, corporations realize that they still don't really know their consumers -- or how best to connect with them.

Bruce Nussbaum, "The Power Of Design," BusinessWeek, May 17, 2004

Also see: Daniel Pink, "Out of the Box," Fast Company, Oct 2003.

Memorial to those killed in Iraq

I remember learning about the choices regarding the information design of the Vietnam memorial a long time ago. The major factor that makes it stands out as a memorial (apart from the black marble) is the organizational principle they used for the plethora of names. Rather than organizing the names in alphabetical order, that would have grouped last names together and somehow lessened the impact of the individual, they chose a design organize chronologically, thereby making sure that each name stood as its own memorial. more info on the Vietnam memorial

The New York Times has now created an interactive “flash memorial” (they may not call it that, but it is) to the first 1,000 killed in Iraq. Flash may not have the same austere impact as black granite but the different ways that you can look at the information will get you if your heart is not made out of wood.

first 1,000 who died (requires free registration)

Karl Long, "experience design - the first 1,000 dead," Experience Curve Blog, 3 Oct 2004

MyLifeBits

A Microsoft Research project called MyLifeBits provides clues about where this approach is headed. Jim Gemmell is one of the media-management experts working on MyLifeBits, a project that looks forward to a time when people record just about everything that happens to them via wearable videocams and other sensors. "When you return from a vacation, the system will make a travelog for you," Gemmell says. "It'll make maps of where you went and pick out nice, clear photos. Then you'll hit the button and they'll go straight to your blog, or your grandma." This world might not be as far off as it seems. "The Longhorn team wants to make sure something like MyLifeBits can be enabled by the next version of Windows," Gemmell says.

David Weinberger, "Point. Shoot. Kiss It Good-Bye." Wired, Oct 2004. via Tomalak's Relm

a lot of functions, but none of them has a lot of strengths

But McGuire also cautioned that Apple needs to be prudent about how it expands the iPod so that it protects the valuable association it has built up with digital music.

"You have to be careful you don't turn it into a digital Swiss army knife where you have a lot of functions, but none of them has a lot of strengths," McGuire said. "You have to be careful about diluting the brand."

Duncan Martell, "Apple fan sites buzz with talk of photo-ready iPod, USA Today, 12 Oct 2004."

'before you do it right, you have to do it at all "

[University of Utah robotics expert Stephen] Jacobsen says, "before you do it right, you have to do it at all."

The first step in designing the exoskeleton, he explains, was building this plastic mock-up of the device that designers could use to gather data about how the human body moves.

...to see how various designs will work, it helps to build physical models too. In an equipment room down the hall, designer Jon Price positions a miniature wooden model of the exoskeleton next to a quarter-scale clay sculpture of a person. This setup, he says, allows researchers to see whether the machinery around a joint will bump into itself, for instance. "You build and you analyze, hand in hand," says Jacobsen. And it's a lot easier to make changes to the design at this scale.

Gregory T. Huang, "Demo: Wearable Robots," Technology Review, July/August 2004 (subscription required)