Preface

For as long as I can remember, I've been designing one thing or another. My earliest recollection is of a newspaper my friends and I put together during summer break before third grade. That publication lasted only for a couple of limited-edition issues; limited, because, in addition to writing articles about soccer, my job was to design the paper. This meant that I had to come up with a head mast, writing the few articles we put together neatly, tracing photos into a simple layout, and finally, manually copying each issue a few times. Altogether, this was a tedious, time-consuming effort, which took a while to compete, since we were lured into playing soccer outside. Yet, the joy of turning a blank sheet of paper into a meaningful product, which we distributed (handed out) to our beloved family members for money to buy an ice cream, planted the seeds that eventually blossomed to become my lifelong career in design.

Over the past three decades, I have made my living as a professional designer of a wide array of products. I designed physical objects, such as print publications, including magazines, books, advertisements, and posters; exhibition booths and gallery exhibits; time-based content, such as interactive learning materials and animated films; and eventually, moved to design user interfaces for desktop applications, websites, and apps.

Experienced designers arrive at their careers by a variety of paths. Some go to school to study one of the design disciplines, whereas others learn on the job by observation, trial, and error. Some designers plan and premap their career, whereas others more or less stumble upon it and are drawn by the interesting challenges and creative opportunities of design work. Experience design attracts practitioners from diverse educational and professional background, who are united not by a single skill set, but rather through their shared interest in multidisciplinary exploration, problem-solving, and creative team work.

The time spent on writing this book has often felt like building a sandcastle on the beach. I spent long pleasant moments pouring sand, shaping it, creating and fortifying the structure. All the while, I imagined that the castle and its formidable walls can withstand the approaching tide, but I accepted the inevitable--the entire construction would be gone in the morning. What's left is the anticipation and excitement of starting over, constructing a new castle--better than the preceding one. It is difficult to define experience design neatly and precisely. I have tried to construct a clearly organized and comprehensive description of what is experience design, the concepts underlying this field of practice, and the processes it typically utilizes. However, experience design is an evolving field, and the structure of its "castle" is in constant flux--definitions, practices, strategies, and tools are evolving continuously.

This book is my attempt to present what I see as the foundation of experience design, which, despite the inevitable waves of change, has an interesting history, a solid structure, and certainly an intriguing future.

I wrote this book for those who are curious about experience design and seek a general understanding of its evolving multifaceted nature. This is not exclusively a prescriptive set of answers. In fact, the central themes of this book are interesting questions, which are yet to be answered--how does an impersonal relationship between companies and market audiences turn into a very personal product experience? What is the role of design and designers in fusing intangible motivations, needs, and emotions of companies and people with concrete products, to form a strong, lasting emotional connection between an individual and a product or brand? 

The discovery process undertaken in this book involves forming a historical perspective. I reviewed relevant milestones throughout human evolution, which are like the lights marking a runway for a safe landing on a dark night. The seeds of much of what is done today, while appearing to be taken right off the pages of a science fiction book, have been planted a long time ago. Other important topics include the stakeholders, processes, methods, and tools that are involved in the practical, day-to-day activity of product design.

Finally, this book is also about the notion that while constant change, uncertainty, and ambiguity can be unnerving, these aspects of experience design are countered by opportunities for open-mindedness, curiosity, and creativity.

 

Note

Due to space limitation, I can list only a few of the works that inspired and shaped my thinking over the years here: Daniel Kahneman’s "Thinking Fast and Slow", Richard Thaler’s "Nudge", Atul Gawande’s "The Checklist Manifesto", Don Norman's "Design of Everyday Things", Ross King’s "Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling", Fredrick Brooks's "The Mythical Man-Month", Ken Albala’s "Food: A Cultural Culinary History", Jacques Pepin’s "The Apprentice", Anthony Gotlieb’s "The Dream of Reason", Edward Humes "Door to Door", Nassim Taleb's "The Black Swan", Robert Cialdini "Influence", Stanley Milgram’s "Obedience to Authority", Dan Ariely’s "Predictably Irrational", Maryanne Wolf’s "Proust and the Squid", Steven Levitt and Stephen Dunbar’s "Freakonomics", Steven Pinker "The Language Instinct", James Gleick's "The Information", and Paul Walker’s "The Feud that Sparked the Renaissance".

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Experience Design - Overview, introduces the reader to the emerging field of experience design (XD) and its evolution, by demonstrating the manifestations of XD in everyday life using contemporary and historical examples.

Chapter 2, The Experience Design Process, is a journey through the evolution of the product design process and the changing dynamics between its core entities--business, products, customers, technology, and design.

Chapter 3, Business and Audience Context, explores motivations, vision, and constraints that influence a product’s experience strategy from a business perspective.

Chapter 4, The User and Context of Use, describes qualitative and quantitative research methods and modeling tools, such as personas and journey maps, that XD practitioners use to research the needs, desires, and expectations of their intended users.

Chapter 5, Experience - Perception, Emotions, and Cognition, is a panoramic, very high-level pan over key physiological and psychological building blocks of human experience, and also includes a discussion of how designers fuse sensory inputs with cognitive processes to build desired emotional experiences.

Chapter 6, Experience Design Disciplines, dives into the evolution of disciplines that specialize in designing surface, space, time, motion, and virtual product experience.

Chapter 7, The Design Team, covers the multidisciplinary nature of XD through an overview of professions and roles that originate in the various design domains. At the heart of the chapter, practitioners share their personal journeys through a career in design.

Chapter 8, Delight and Engagement, explores the characteristics of great experience, which amplify a product’s desirability, engagement, conversion, retention, and reputation.

Chapter 9, Tying It All Together - From Concept to Design, is a sweep through concept development and the techniques that help designers communicate the design to stakeholders and validate their approach with target users.

Chapter 10, Design Testing, focuses on the important phase of testing to confirm that the experience meets the needs of the business and users.

Chapter 11, The Design Continuum, concludes the book with a focus on managing design, from an evolutionary refinement through governance to revolutionary overhauls that unseat traditions.

Who this book is for

This book does not assume any prerequisite training in or knowledge of design, business, or technology. I wrote this with the following audiences in mind:

• General readers who heard about experience design (XD) through the media and are interested to learn more about it
• High school students who are researching inspiring careers in technology and design
• Readers who wish to enter the field of XD, but want to understand which of the many possible specializations might best align with their interests, current skills, and training needs
• Organizations that want to build internal awareness among leadership and employees around core concepts of XD
• Non-designers who want to get a big picture of XD and collaborative design models that involve developers throughout the design process, not just at the end
• Anyone who wants to understand the differences between XD and UX, CX, IxD, IA, SD, VD, PD, and more importantly, their convergence in XD

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important to us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply email [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Thank you for purchasing this Packt book. We strive to do our best to ensure that you get the most from your purchase:

Downloading the color images of this book 

We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/ExploringExperienceDesign_ColorImages.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books-maybe a mistake in the text or the code--we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.

To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.

Piracy

Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.