Adaptive Path Blog

When we design products, we’re often extremely concerned with the features of the product. After all, those are the things we market and spend a majority of our time designing, right? Features are what go on the box or how we pitch the project to users. Especially for those of us who cut our teeth on web design, there wasn’t much else except chunks of features and content. Transitions? The page loading, that was the transition between bits.

But now, with increased processor speeds, new interaction paradigms, and richer interactions possible on most platforms, the in-between stuff–transitions, animations, interaction logic, the connective tissue between features and content, how everything fits together–is becoming ever more important. One could argue that this is where the experience design flourishes the most.

Features will eventually be copied and become obsolete. Right now, someone is out there copying your features! But the experience of using your product is significantly harder to duplicate. You can make a Windows machine look and kind of act like a Mac with some effort, but it isn’t going to work exactly like one. Why? Because of the in-between stuff, the little moments that make a Mac a Mac and a Windows OS a Windows OS. I think a case could be made that the reason a Linux OS was never adopted by general consumers was, in part, due to the lack of the in-between moments that give systems their character.

The in-between stuff also extends to the “under the hood” stuff too. Preferences, settings, and the other bits that are there just to make the rest of the experience better, well, those need to be thought about and designed too. Too often (and I am as guilty of this as anyone), those parts of the system are left until last and hastily designed–if they are looked at by a designer at all. The details count. Details are places for delight and cleverness, for small moments that say that someone, somewhere cared and bothered to think this product through. Design is in the details.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Experience design, Interaction Design, Product Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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