June 21, 2011
BMW – Driving Experience
Am Freitag, 17.06. hatten Kai und ich die Gelegenheit an einem Fahrertraining unseres Projektpartners BMW teilzunehmen. Untersteuern, übersteuern, Notbremsung und viele andere Fahrmanöver haben uns die “Freude am Fahren” definitiv näher gebracht. Weiter geht es mit der Arbeit an der “Freude beim Fahren”. Hier ein kleiner Eindruck unserer Fahrt…
September 7, 2010
Experience before products
For many in business, designing the experience before the product seems a weird thing to ask for. In the end, it is all about computers, mobile phones, game consoles, or washing machines – concrete products addressing concrete tasks. Yes, they should look and feel good, but, hey, working, talking, playing, washing is what people do and we provide products to do so. It is all about the product. This is at best “self-absorbed” as David Grzelak pointed out in his a brief opinion on Advertising Age. I would call it ignorant.
I am happening to be premium customer of O2. This is not because of my shocking turnover, but because of a muddled DSL order, which forced me to spend some considerable time talking to various people in various call centers. As premium customer, I am granted the privilege to apply for test driving new mobile phones. O2 organizes it as a raffle. The lucky winner gets the phone for four weeks or so and is then asked to give feedback for this privilege. This is what I would call self-absorbed. Hey, asking people to test without offering any compensation for the hassle is one thing, but framing it as a prize, a privilege is outrageous. For O2, it is all telephones and technology; for me life consists of a little more. As Grzelak emphasizes: People are not interested in the product itself, its detailed features and potential variations. And asking them about products might be futile.
They simply don’t want to talk about the product, the ingredients or what those ingredients did or didn’t do. However, after thousands of hours of research, I’ve learned what people don’t mind at all and never once resist or get tired of talking about is … themselves. Consumers are, after all, people. They engage with things and products that are interesting and meaningful to them. In order to get beyond the uninteresting and, oftentimes, undifferentiating focus on product features, marketers must position their brand not within a category, but within consumer culture.
I fully agree. In one of my recent industry-based projects on measuring the quality of interactive products, I tried to push the idea that we should rather measure the resulting experience in terms of needs fulfilled (see) than asking people to assess products. I got not more than a blank stare from the management, followed by being assured that it is much easier to talk about concrete features of a product than fuzzy human experiences and emotions. Maybe for a manager of a technology provider this holds true. For the rest of us, it don’t.
Let’s focus on the meaningful stories around product use. Let’s seek ways to deliberately design those, not only to pile up “practical” features. It is not about the product, but about how it impacts daily life through providing compelling and meaningful experiences.
June 29, 2010
From industrial design to user experience
I am a bit reluctant to just post links to other people’s papers. However, this is an exception. Sarah Diefenbach made me aware of Mark Baskinger‘s statement “From industrial design to user experience” in the UXmagazine.
Okay, you’re a designer, you’re expected to deliver something that is ergonomic and easy to use, and it has to be beautiful too. So, what will this thing do once you bring it into the world?” As you might guess, the students catch on quickly and respond with, “It should have some significance to the user and to enhance their lives in some way.” Eureka! In their minds they shift their thinking from making things to designing things that help facilitate actions, behaviors and experiences.
Being an experience designer associated to an industrial design faculty myself, Mark expresses exactly what I feel. Worth reading.
May 19, 2010
Drumming for the better co-experience
Cars are rarely thought of as social spaces, although most of them have two or more seats. Typically, interior and interaction design focuses on the driver, the task of driving, comfort functions and the ubiquitous entertainment system. Today, especially children bring their mobile devices into the car and listen to music while on the backseat. This form of cocooning makes social interaction and resulting feelings of relatedness even less likely.
In their semester abroad at the Helsinki University of Art and Design, Kai Eckoldt and Benjamin Schulz (supervised by Ilpo Koskinen) set out to create social experiences in a car. In one of their projects, they hacked a little drum computer, put the touch sensors at various places, such as floor mats, the steering wheel, seats, and hooked up the sound chip to the car’s stereo. Have a look at the video, and watch what can happen:
And some pictures from the workshop and the set-up:
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For a full discussion of the project refer to
April 30, 2010
Positive Psychology
User Experience is about happiness and well-being. As I wrote elsewhere: “Usability wants us to die rich, UX wants us to die happy.” In that sense, Experience Design is about designing interventions, which make people feel better – or happier? – or make their lives more meaningful? – or less miserable? You get it … this is where the trouble starts. If we want to design for experience, we not only need to think about what experience is, but also what our design goal is. Because, as I would argue, there are plenty of different joys and forms of happiness, each following its own set of rules.
When looking for theory and research on happiness, Positive Psychology is a first place to stop. Initiated by the prominent psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly Positive Psychology devotes itself to the study of the positive sides of human life. Far from settled and from my point of view, sometimes with the touch of esoteric self-help, Positive Psychology however asks the right questions.
Have a look at Martin Seligman’s engaging introduction to Positive Psychology.
March 20, 2010
Billow’s Feeding Machine (Figure 5.1, page 60)
In my book on Experience Design (page 60), I wrote about Billow’s Feeding Machine featured in Chaplin’s Modern Times. Have a look …
The intellectual roots of HCI are work science, work psychology, and ergonomics. All those
disciplines were basically triggered by a more or less economically-driven demand for an improved
workplace (Karwowski,W., 2006). One strategy was to select and train people to increase work performance, the other to adapt workplace design, machines and so forth to the skills and capabilities of workers. In this context, efficiency and effectiveness was clearly an institutional and not a personal goal. Better performance equaled more money. The human was viewed as a necessary, but yet improvable part of the system. Do you remember Billow’s Feeding Machine in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times? The feeding machine is “a practical device which automatically feeds your men while at work. Don’t stop for lunch: be ahead of your competitor. The Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production,and decrease your overhead. Allowus to point out some of the features of this wonderful machine: its beautiful, aerodynamic, streamlined body; its smoothness of action, made silent by our electro-porous metal ball bearings. Let us acquaint you with our automaton soup plate—its compressed-air blower, no breath necessary, no energy required to cool the soup.” Back in 1936, the economic world seemed so obsessed with efficiency and effectiveness that Chaplin could mock it easily.
March 20, 2010
Daniel Kahneman clarifies Experience versus Memory
Evan Karapanos pointed me at this revealing lecture by Daniel Kahneman at TED Talks:
Have a look at this publication
