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Re: the debate over whether experience can be designed:

Jon Kolko wrote:

If I claim to “design a rollercoaster”, I intend for it to be duplicated – exactly as I created – over and over. If I claim to “design the experience of using the rollercoaster”, it follows that I intend for that use to be duplicated – exactly as I created – over and over. If I claim to “design the experience framework in which the rollercoaster is used”, it leaves room for people to experience it in their own way.

I’ve always thought that the term “experience design” can also be a shorthand for “designing for experiences”. That is, that we design systems that invite interaction. We create contexts that include opportunities for certain designer-selected activities.

I can agree that an “experience” is a personal thing that can no more be designed than love can be architected or happiness blueprinted. But we can create the affordances that suggest, coax, and guide users towards experiences we designers can reasonably hope or even expect to occur, experiences that our own experience tells us are likely to occur.

So yes, we can absolutely design the “framework” as Jon says.

But if we do the job right we will also create the experience itself — we can permit and even direct users to have almost precisely the experience we intend.

In the rollercoaster example, every user’s experience will surely be a little different, but not so very different that the designer can’t be said to be designing those experiences. Most users will experience damn near the same feelings of fear, excitement, and fun the designer intended them to feel. If a rollercoaster passenger feels melancholy or sleepy, they are likely a rare exception.

I hate to make distinctions between art and design, but in expressive art forms it’s generally more acceptable to allow ‘users’ to have a broad range of potential experience than we are willing to accept from artifacts of design. To that extent, then, how can we say that designers aren’t creating experiences when even artists can?

Is communication not, at its core, the creation of shared experience? As designers, are we not communicating when we design for experience?

We have to have the confidence as designers that we can, in fact, create designs that directly affect the psyches of our users in approximately predictable ways.

[On a philosophical level, of course, there may exist an unknowable quality to human experience. Two rollercoaster riders may describe their experiences in exactly the same words, and MRI scans may show identical heat maps during their voyages, and yet the essential metaphysical experience for each rider may be entirely different. I accept this possibility. But because this sort of understanding of experience is, as I said, unknowable, I suggest we should only discuss that aspect of experience that we can actually describe or measure. And those aspects of experience can, I think, be designed, or at least "designed for".]

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Steve Baty # @askrom re: designing *for* experiences – for me the key is the intentionality. There’s a goal to the design wrt the experience.

Chris Fahey # @docbaty *EXACTLY!* The goal is *an experience*, transposed from the designer to the user. This is what communication is all about. Sharing.

Chris Fahey # Sometimes the user experience the designer intends to create is precise (rollercoaster) sometimes it’s more general and vague (silly putty).

Dave Malouf # @askrom is “experience” really the goal? of the user? of the designer? While experiences will happen, not so sure it is a goal.

Dave Malouf # @askrom I had a great convo with @louisrosenfeld about the term experience. He has been thinking of using “engagement” instead.

Dave Malouf # @askrom but I’m not sure that being “engaging” or even a conscious engagement is always in the design. Passivity is still possible.

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD I honestly have no idea what “engagement” means. It’s a far more mushy term than “experience”.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD @askrom Experience is *a* goal, usually. Not *the* goal, although sometimes it is.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom it is? maybe in entertainment, but not in MS Word. #experience #uxabout

Steve Baty # @daveIxD @askrom Come on, Dave. I did say “usually”. If there’s one thing we can agree on it’s the absence of absolutes #experience #uxabout

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Huh? “Experience” is not a goal of MS Word? Sorry, Dave, but WTF?

Dave Malouf # @docbaty don’t you think that MS Word breaks the minority rule as an example. I don’t think it is petty at all. #experience #uxabout

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Wasn’t suggesting you were being petty. Word offers an exception without arguing against what I was saying. #experience #uxabout

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Although Word doesn’t create an ecstatic user experience, it does enable you to do things roughly in the way the designer intended.

Dave Malouf # @askrom uh? Isn’t the goal to elegantly create a document? My goal is never to experience creating a document, no?

Dave Malouf # @askrom I can’t defend engagement except to say that the touchpoints are what a user engages with, ! the experience. engagement is a medium.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD There is *an* experience to using Word. Whether it’s the one intended (if there was an intent) is arguable. #experience #ux

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Engagement merely means connection. A 5000 volt electric current can engage you. It’s too low in the UX stack, below communication.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD But back to my original point: intentionality is the key. To design for experience is to show intent in that dir’n #experience #ux

Will Evans # @docbaty here I have to disagree. Tangerine Sorbet is abso-fucking-lutely marvelous! #experience #ux

Steve Baty # @semanticwill In what way is that disagreeing with me? #experience #ux

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD A Word user’s goal is to create a document. The goal of Word’s UX design is to enable you to create a document *in a certain way*.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I agree totally. All design includes some sort of intentionality from what I can see. then again so is art. #experience #ux

Dave Malouf # @askrom Word’s UX? aren’t you just using UX and UI synonymously?

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Please, no. (Do you really think I’m that dumb?) There *is* a UX to Word, a sensibility and philosophy behind the UI.

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD The intentionality of art is often unclear. Artists often obscure and avoid creating intended experience. It’s emergent experience.

Dave Malouf # @askrom re: art … YUP! I know the diference between art & design. I was just saying that “intentionality” by itself is not that difference

Steve Baty # @askrom The engagement facet of our work can be more meaningful. Think ‘connection’ = ‘loyalty’ or ‘emotional investment’. Can be important

Chris Fahey # @docbaty Okay, that’s a more meaningful definition of “engagement”. It’s a longer-term, big-picture thinking about UX.

Russ Unger # Okay, so that’s interesting. User Engagement. Visual Design, after all, is part of UX. We design the engagement portion, no? Maybe.

Joe Sokohl # @russu The problem with User Engagement is, to me, that it devolves very quickly into branding. I think what I do has most utility in use.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi By ‘branding’ you mean the visual representation rather than brand values or positioning?

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty No, I mean the brand values & positioning as realized in visuals/audio/other means. Again, slippery slope.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi I’d argue that a brand exists in its utility as much as it does in its visual/audio/other means. Perhaps more so

Russ Unger # @mojoguzzi I understand the branding, but I felt it from more of an interaction perspective. And I’m not sold, just pondering

Russ Unger # @mojoguzzi the other issue is that we’re not really the presentation layer–that’s generally someone else

Penny Hagen # @docbaty @daveIxD not sure on articulation but: the link between term “experience” and perspective & embodiment seems impt. #experience #ux

Steve Baty # @pennyhagen Good point #experience #ux

Dave Malouf # @askrom I’m sorry, I know you are smart, and experienced. That isn’t my intent. But you are not listening to my words, either. …

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Maybe you need to clarify for me how MSWord doesn’t involve a designed user experience, a user experience intended by the designer.

Dave Malouf # @askrom All strategy, Brand, IA, IxD, etc. in SW and HW is communicated how? The user only experiences 1 thing. What is that? The Interface!

Dave Malouf # RT @nadya_d: Gallup: user satisfaction with no emotional engagement doesn’t count. … http://tinyurl.com/crvxh7

Dave Malouf # @askrom MS word leads to an experience. But I do not believe that experience is the goal. Brand, loyalty, success, are goals, but not an exp

Dave Malouf # @askrom If you want to call the combination of those qualities an “experience”. So be it. But that is an arbitrary category. It’s marketing.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD You could generalise to include interactions that are non-computer related. Stores; call centres; the product ‘box’ > interface

Dave Malouf # @docbaty don’t those all have touchpoints? interfaces where the user is engaging?…

Chris Fahey # The user experience is the soul of a user interface. It’s the philosophy that guides the design of the tactile, visual, audible interstices.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Characterising those interactions only in terms of their interface limits the scope of the design challenge. The roots are deep.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty Supposedly though I am uneducated in it. Service Design differs from IxD in that it designs the story between the touchpoints.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I wasn’t characterising them ONLY as interfaces, but as being interfaces. The interface itself has infinite design opps. THANK G-D!

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Fair enough

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I call that strategy.

Dave Malouf # @askrom What is the difference between “strategy” and “UX”? Seriously? Isn’t UX just strategy? Narrative?

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD “Strategy” has oh so many meanings, even more than “UX”. I really don’t know what you mean by that.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Strategy is a combination of UX as a destination and a path

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I don’t understand that? Please try again in the next 140 char please?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD UX is an end in itself – as a manifestation of brand, for example; and as a means – to achieve loyalty, awareness, revenue etc

Dave Malouf # Question? do people just get really pissed off doing this, or do they get the same lessons in rhetoric & practiced thinkng that I do?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD I enjoy it when it’s a dialogue and aimed at furthering understanding; not so when it’s dogmatic (Enjoying this…)

Dave Malouf # @docbaty UX is a thing? the collection of the deconstruction of the elements that make up the interface, maybe?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD That’s certainly a valid way to think of it

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom maybe I’m just an idiot, but it really sounds like UX is the manifestation of a strategy embodied in an interface.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Intangible, but identifiable.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD But no, not the parts, but the whole

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom So UX then is a small part of a Strategy? Strategy being almost obviously wider than UX but both on the same plain?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Not necessarily so small a part of strategy. Depends on the business. Restaurant – very big part; steel manufacturer – small.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty so 1 could argue that it is an arbitrary assignment to the collection of pieces that are used to create a UI to embody a strat?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Again, I would hesitate to assign such importance to UI in that concept. a) it isn’t singular; b) UI doesn’t necessarily exist

Dave Malouf # @daveIxD I believe that UX/UCD etc. are terms created to sell an idea to a small group of people. it has been expanded inappropriately.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I knew “UI” was a problem. It was my way to abbreviate “interface” more generically. Would TP for touch point be better?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Touch point would be better since it carries less concise baggage.

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty I see that, but I posit that branding is an extension of marketing which is an extension of business strategy. UX flows more from.

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty …the person looking into a company, as opposed to company reaching out. There are fuzzy intersections, of course. Not hard lines.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi Ah well, I’d posit that marketing is a subset of brand and that it’s brand that flows from business strategy

Dave Malouf # @louisrosenfeld Question: Can the word “engagement” apply to passive systems for you? I like it except for this piece, which is big in UbiC.

Louis Rosenfeld # @daveIxD @askrom Engagement is what most of us are trying to design for. Experience is ambiguous; engagement is always positive. Right?

Dave Gray (in response to a re-statement of the original point) # @docbaty mmm food for thought. My answer: you can try. And then shit happens

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The discussion on IxDA’s mailing list is still going. You can find the discussion thread there.

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