Monthly Archives: April 2003

When is it experience design? When is it user centered design? When is it design? Developing research questions around fuzzy ideas is really hard so I’ve had to try and define what experience design can mean. It is not supposed to be all inclusive but it should be a good basis to move forward with [...]

I hope you don’t think it’s a cop out to just post a quote, but it is super relevant and did I mention from 1955 “What people really desire are not products, but satisfying experiences. People want products because they want the experience-bringing services which they hope the products will render.” Lawrence Abbott, Quality and [...]

Grudin’s Law: When those who benefit are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail, or at least be subverted (not sure where this was first proposed but I found it in Donald Normans essential book “Things that make us smart” pg. 113) This is very applicable to the realm [...]

It is only through thinking outside the product that companies can really start “orchestrating” the entire customer experience, the product, the brand, the service, the support etc. Experience design is pretty ill defined at this stage of the game, people rightly point out that you can’t design an experience. I’ve been struggling trying to define [...]

In the article “consumers are looking for meaningful brand experiences” these guys propose that there is an opportunity to build cultural capital with brands. It is true that as culture becomes less owned by the public (who’s paying for cultural events?) and religion brings less meaning to peoples existence the more companies will continue to [...]

An important design rule, that is the “rule of least astonishment”, whatever the interface does it should not be the least bit astonishing, like you hit search and the window closes. (I don’t remember the source of this rule so post a comment if you know)

In a my previous post on brand behavior I proposed that behavior is one of the major and least managed components of how a brand is experienced. Conversely comes the idea that a strong brand can align employee behavior to be congruent with the brand image. I believe that incongruence between message and experience is [...]

Experience = sensory orgy is similar to the misconception that design = high styling An experience needs to be appropriate. It needs to be appropriate to customer expectation (however that is formed) It needs to be appropriate to the organizations strategy Getting closer to the customer through contextual research to understand there unstated and unserved [...]

some ideas for a survey on what designers and business people think Experience Design contributes to competitive advantage. (as a working definition Experience Design is the end to end design process of proactively managing all touch points a user/customer has with a product, system or service ensuring a user / customers expectations are met or [...]

Some opportunities for strategic use of experience design was highlighted In this recent article from the Boston Consulting Group, I just pulled out the points that I thought experience design could contribute significantly to or even lead (hence the numbering order). The Boston Consulting Group, Retailing Online: Coming of Age 1. Identify your highest-value customers [...]