The name itself explains what experience design is: It is a design practices that looks and focuses on human experience, either physical or digital.
If you came to this post expecting to read something related to a romantic restaurant, sorry to disappoint you, I was jus trying to create a clever title.
In the last post, the goal was to explain what on earth is Interactive Design, there, a little analogy was used. This analogy described the difference between Interactive Design and Experience Design. In this post, the goal is to talk more about Experience Design after that little introduction done in the previous post.
Changes in Design
Over the past years, the availability of products has increased, making it easier to purchase a product. It has become more and more important to create products that differ from each other somehow.
This is where experience design and interactive design come in handy. People are buying products that not only function but that make them feel happy, products that in the end of the day, produce a positive emotional response. This has been the new task in the past years, how to create something that produces a positive emotional response, something that allows the user to encounter a different experience when using the product, something that makes people smile.
“Start With WHY”
Experience is not a product that can be designed, but a designer can create an experience through his design. Experience designers need to focus more in the WHY while the usability focuses on the HOW.
A designer must think what the impact is he wants to create in the user, focus on the way the user is going to interact with the product, think of the process, and reinterpret the emotions the user is going to experience in his design. Why does the designer want the user to feel that specific emotion? Why does the designer want the user to experience that specific feeling? Why might a user have a negative thought of the product? Just as Simon Sinek says, “Start With Why.”
Persona
At the end of the day, the designer cannot control how the user is going to feel when the product is used, but they can work to create a process and interactions that will generate emotional responses, hopefully positive.
Like any other design, it is very important to focus on the user. They are the ones that will allow the product to be different from others. It is not as simple as designing for a general target, the specification, the extreme definition of a persona, allows the designer to narrow down the needs, feelings and environments. All key elements to create a story and a process that will drive the user through a whole new experience.
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