This essay explores the field of Experience Design: what it is, how to practice it, and what tools and techniques to use.
It consists of two parts: Theory and Practice. In Theory, the fundamentals of Experience Design are explored from an academic perspective. Practice details the various models, tools and techniques that have been used in one such Experience Design project during my time at Hyper Island.
To exist is to experience. Experience is how we sense, feel and think about the world around us, how we recall our past, and how we define ourselves. Experience is continuous and ever-present, only to be influenced, never to be made.
Experience design, then, is the glue that holds the other disciplines together, much like how experience holds life together. The role of the experience designer is that of a director, moving set-pieces and writing the script – but it's up to the user to act out the scene.
The experience designer is also an interpreter: translating the client's problem into the user's situation, the user's situation into an opportunity, and that opportunity back into the client's language. Solving the puzzle will never become easy – no matter how many models get made to describe it, the practice will always differ from the theory. But so long as you keep an open mind, dig in, and really listen to what's needed, it might just become natural.
Because in the end, there's nothing more natural than our experience of the world. We just have to listen.
Thank you for reading!
Made ✨ by Zeno Kapitein