Experience Design
All designs, to varying degrees, are “Experience Designs.” Products exist in that space between people and their goals, dreams and objectives. Well designed products support these objectives and dreams by encoding an understanding of the relationship between people and their intended experiences within the product. Below are three select examples of Products and their associated XD. Each one represents a distinct challenge and its proposed solution. Some solutions are more successful than others, but all were objectively successful in their own ways.
Hologic
Many times we think about the “user” of a medical product as being the patient. In practice, the “ultimate user” may be unseen to the casual observer. Beyond the patient there is the technician/operator. Beyond the technician is the clinic that owns the equipment. And prior to installation in a clinic, large instruments are assembled on a manufacturing floor by assembly technicians. Each of these spaces and activities is surrounded by people with unique objectives and needs. A successful product design and “experience design” understands and accommodates each of these environments and “users.”
Cue
The realm of entertainment technology is a space where magic happens every day and with every interaction. In order for music enjoyment to be truly “magical” an audio product needs to become optically transparent leaving only the listener and the musical content. Experience design in the consumer audio space tends to follow the listener/user through the experience of finding and enjoying content and understanding that any interaction with a physical device needs to be easy, seamless and remind the user of the reverence for the “art” of aesthetic and musical composition and performance that is being conveyed through the product. Cue audio products were designed to reflect this attention to detail.
Viaflo
Laboratories are places where very hard and tedious work is done and mistakes can be costly. Some might suggest that instruments such as pipettes essentially transform the human hand into a high-precision fluid handling machine. Repetitive stress injuries are common in labs. Given an understanding of duration of use and repetitive nature of pipetting, a successful device design reaches the user more than halfway by being extremely comfortable to hold and extraordinarily fast and easy to operate.