Comments on: WTF is Experience Design?

By: Design Refugee

Design Refugee — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 23:07:41 +0000

Bob, I don’t believe web designers need greater legitimacy or that some new age term will grant it to them. I think it’s more a matter of the Print Mafia grouping everything they don’t understand under one term.

By: Bob Jacobson

Bob Jacobson — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 17:30:38 +0000

You’re right: “web designer” is the right term for someone who designs for the Web. That’s not really experience design, although web designers seeking a greater legitimacy have coopted the term. Think of experience design as the design of things, events, processes, or environments (you quoted Wikipedia already) from the standpoint of the “experiencer’s” POV — or as much as the designer(s) can get into it. All designs are experiences, of course. Calling out the interaction with the audience/perceiver/user tends to focus the mind on understanding the design recipient, where usual design methods celebrate the designer’s interior.

Not so hard!

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 05:47:37 +0000

Agreed, it seems as though it’s a new Orwellian word for the same things I learned 20 years ago when simply studying “Graphic Design”. Graphic design is based on understanding the end user and communicating information. Perhaps “Experience Design” is short for “Unexperienced Designer”.

Fellow Designosaur,
Eric