Are All Experiences Designed?
by Andrew CrowJust before the holiday break, I was driving on the 24 freeway right at the Caldecott tunnel when I saw that someone had put up one strand of Christmas lights in the dirty window of the little office that sits at the base of the tunnel. When I thought about it, I realized that someone did that intentionally to create a little holiday spirit in an otherwise bleak location.
When we talk about experience design, we discuss it in terms of intentional efforts to create an experience for a product or service. There are meetings, decisions, consultants, plans and well-made executions – all of this with an eye towards producing a purposeful, desired experience for an individual or group of people.
But, the person that put those Christmas lights did all those things, too. Maybe not in a conscious or thought-out manner, but there was an intention to create an experience.
So, my question is, do human beings always intentionally design experiences – even unknowningly?
Outside of acts of God or nature (things that we cannot control), we create experiences for ourselves every day. We organize our closets in a certain way to make dressing in the morning efficient, we walk certain streets because we find them pleasant, we cook our food for taste, we decorate at holidays to create a mood and tradition.
What causes us to do this? Do we simply like it? Or is there a deeper need?
As experience designers, are there ways to build upon this trait? Can we somehow expand on this assumed, basic human behavior? Are there ways to recognize these natural tendencies and leverage them when we design experiences?
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on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Experience design, Experience strategy, Idealism, uncensored, Questions, The Big Picture.
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January 9th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Excellent questions, Andrew. It’s very existential of you. Actually, there was a wonderful debate we had in design grad school at Carnegie Mellon. It was first year design seminar taught by Dick Buchanan. He put forth two reading assignments - one on existential thought and one on essentialist thought - both in relation to “what experience is/means.”
Existential thought in relation to experience basically states that people create their own experiences and make meaning of those experiences in their own terms. There are no experiences put upon them - just experiences they enter into, make meaning of, and describe in their own terms.
Essentialism in relation to experience is the idea that there are specific attributes all experiences have,and if it does not have those attributes, cannot be an experience.
All very interesting questions, but to get back to your post, I think there many aspects of our lives, experiences we have, that we would like to be different. As designers we are able to provide different tools to people so they can use them to create the experiences they want. You may use a stapler to attach two sheets of paper together while someone else may use it to hold their book open while they read so they have both hands free (this example from Dick Buchanan). We may build products/tools/services with one use in mind and people will always find different ways to use them to get the desired experience.
To me, it’s not about capitalizing on this, but recognizing this is part of the design equation. Designers can only design the product/tool/service (and even process) and hope for a specific “user experience,” but in the end, people will determine what that experience looks like and how it makes them feel.
I don’t see our job to “designing the experience,” but providing the stuff that fuels experiences. I guess I’m more comfortable say we are experience enablers rather than experience designers. But that doesn’t sound as good in practice, does it?
January 10th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
This post reminds me of Thoughtless Acts