experiences, Experiences, and The Thing Behind the Glass
by Sarah B.Last Friday, a group from Adaptive Path went to see The Art of Participation exhibition at the SFMOMA. The show, which closed on Feb. 9th, was a collection of participatory art works, art that requires audience contribution in some form, created from 1950 to the present. It included work by Alan Kaprow (a painter associated strongly with Happenings), Yoko Ono (her Cut Piece), Fluxus, John Cage (4’33”), and Janet Cardiff. Unlike 99% of art museum exhibitions, visitors could and did interact directly with the work.
On one hand, I arranged the field trip to the SFMOMA for fun. But my not-so-hidden agenda was to challenge my understanding of “experience,” and gain some insight from my colleagues’ experience of the show.
I hear the words “interaction,” “participation,” and “experience” fifty times a day. I probably say them or type them or think them that many times, too. Don’t know about you, but when I use the same word that many times, their meaning becomes fuzzy. Worse, I start to believe I really know what the words mean. I start making assumptions. I need to check in with myself occasionally and push the reset button. Sometimes, this activity confirms my understanding. Sometimes it shifts subtly.
I’ve pulled together a couple of thoughts from the trip and subsequent discussions.
Experiences with a Big E
Teresa and I, at Peter Samis’ urging, did Janet Cardiff’s 2001 video piece “The Telephone Call.” Janet Cardiff is a sound artist who completed a video piece for the SFMOMA several years ago. You check out a video camera and stereo headphones from the main desk. Cardiff has pre-recorded a walk through the MOMA, recording all the sounds and sights there at the time. When you experience the piece, you follow her path through the museum. You literally see and hear what she did, while you see and hear what’s there now. It was the closest thing to a time machine I’ve ever seen. It was also an Experience with a Big “E.” The experience engaged me physically (heart racing, all senses firing), cognitively (trying to process two realities at the same time), emotionally (becoming invested in the story Cardiff was telling), and socially (Teresa and I interacting with each other, feeling some social awkwardness).
For me, other Experiences with a Big E include good theater, roller coasters, concerts, motorcycle riding, fun houses, playing in a band. I experience it with all my senses, in my body, in my mind, in my heart.
The Person and the Thing Behind the Glass
The show also had online pieces and installed kiosks throughout. I have rarely seen an installed kiosk in a museum that really works and engages people in the same way physically interactive exhibits, do. When you having Experiences with a Big E, the dull click of the mouse echoes through the hall with its dullness. Click… Sigh.
Yesterday, at our company meeting, I brought this up. I wondered out loud, when we say we are “designing experiences” that occur online or in a mobile device, what do we mean? Especially, when we are “designing experiences” for, as one colleague called it, the Thing Behind the Glass— mobile devices, screens, PCs, TVs, iPods or anything with a piece of plastic or glass between you and the thing you are interacting with. It was a passionate discussion. I was reminded that sometimes I have experiences online or with a Thing Behind the Glass that are, in fact, transformative. They do fire on multiple levels; sometimes my heart even races or I might exclaim loudly that something is awesome. But a lot of times, this experience happens with a lower case e – it’s subtle, it’s internal, it’s slowly transformative. It’s more of a cerebral experience.
Designing Opportunities for Experience
Recently, one of my colleagues pointed out a debate going on in the design community about the semantics of “experience design” and “designing experiences.” One designer goes so far to call the idea of “experience design,” as he says so eloquently puts it, horseshit. While I admit I love saying that word loudly over and over, I don’t get much else from black and white characterizations. Maybe I get a little over-stimulated, like a kid on fruit loops and apple juice, but not necessarily meaningfully engaged.
Human experience is messy. A layer of skin separates us from each other. I will never know what truly goes on in your head and you will never know what truly goes on in mine. With that in mind, of course the idea of “designing experiences” seems ludicrous. I do believe, though, that the value of these semantic debates is that they encourage us to think deeply and specify our meaning.
I use research tools to illuminate the human experience as it relates to a specific problem. Then, I design something with respect and attention to that experience. The outcome will support, assist, or facilitate a conversation with between human beings in a positive way. While I am not literally designing that person’s experience, I am designing opportunities for that person to have an experience.
Right now, most of the opportunities for experience I design are quieter experiemce, Things Behind the Glass. Someday I hope to design opportunities for Experiences with a Big E or some other hybrid experience that combines both.
What’s your experience with “experience?”
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February 12th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
“I will never know what truly goes on in your head and you will never know what truly goes on in mine.”
A touch solipsistic, no? It’s worth pondering the fact that what goes on inside human heads is, more often than not, language. And not a private language with words with private definitions, but words with definitions that have largely been defined for you. So isn’t it a bit weird for experience designers, who communicate with users through verbal and visual language, to turn around and claim that shared understanding is not really possible? Doesn’t that undermine the very possibility of success at experience design? If I were a client of Adaptive Path, I would not be pleased to hear this…
Merleau-Ponty had this very interesting thing to say: “If I try to study love or hate purely from inner observation, I will find very little to describe: a few pangs, a few heart throbs – in short, trite agitations which do not reveal the essence of love or hate… We must reject the prejudice which makes “inner realities” out of love, hate or anger, leaving them accessible to one single witness: the person who feels them. Anger, shame, hate and love are not psychic facts hidden at the bottom of another’s consciousness: they are types of behavior or styles of conduct which are visible from the outside”
Is this not precisely the claim that experience designers make? Not of love and hate, perhaps, but of other types of “inner” experience.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Interesting and thought-provoking post. I agree with alsomike in so far as you are probably underestimating the shared background of body, culture and language that determines the possibilities for experiences that are available in any given environment. I have been thinking about this for some time in relation to architectural design and whether it is indeed possible to ‘design experiences.’ My starting point was phenomenology but has since evolved to embrace JJ Gibson’s idea of affordances, particularly as developed by Tim Ingold. I still haven’t found time to explore this in depth, but I think it offers a promising direction. For me, the starting point for exploring experience is not the individual but the culture into which each of us is born. It is that, coupled with our physical ‘effectivities,’ that allows us to experience the world.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Very interesting article Sarah. The fact that you question those subtleties makes Adaptivepath more and more active in the field.
I admire this nuance between “Experience design” and “designing experiences” but I don’t think it should change the way we do our work. Let us avoid the fallacies of the language. In Experience Design, we design experiences. It is just a notion of Activity and Task which, in my opinion, refers to the same thing.
Now back to the idea of “Designing experiences”, I believe you perfectly said it: we design Opportunities for Experience. Not because our products are behind the glass but simply because Experience is the user’s perception and interpretation of our designs. And that on the other hand, we cannot control or create. However we can create more opportunities for Experience which increases the possibilities of unique interpretations and therefore more experiences (good or bad).
So instead of hoping to design opportunities for Experiences with a Big E, I would suggest you just keep designing opportunities and possibilities. That’s what creativity is about. And Experience with a Big E will just emerge from that.
Rachel’s article that was published a couple of weeks ago speaks genuinely about Possibilities and I believe that this is where both your ideas converge.