Experience-Centred Design Dhaval Vyas Room: T-304

Experience-Centered Design: An Introduction A Scenario: A father comes home from work. As he rushes into the hall, he keys in the password to disable his house alarm. His daughter comes in behind him. He needs to get the dinner prepared so he switches on the computer in the study for his daughter and sets up her favourite game for her. Once she is settled in, he goes to the kitchen, prepares the food, and places it in the oven. He listens to his phone messages while doing this. Eventually he sets the temperature and timer and leaves the food to cook. As he passes down the hallway to the sitting room he pops his head into the study. His daughter asks him to play with her. “Back in two minutes love.” In the sitting room, he programmes the TV to record a drama that he and his wife want to watch later. Now he is heading for the study to play his daughter’s computer game with her. - McCarthy, Wright (2004)

We live with the technology 3G Mobile Phones iTV iPod SMS Smart Fridge Auto Mobile Cooking Arrangement

User-Interface Design goes beyond Desktop Computing - Ubiquitous Computing - Pervasive Systems - Tangible Interfaces - Ambient Intelligence - Context-aware Systems - and more… Increasing influence of these technologies on our day-to-day lives has fuelled a shift to Experience-Centered Design

A shift in HCI community HCI Textbooks focusing on User- Experience - “The Invisible Computer” – Don Norman (1999) - “Leonardo’s Laptop” – Ben Shneiderman (2002) - “Funology – From Usability to Enjoyment” – Mark Blythe, Kees Overbeeke, Andrew Monk, Peter Wright (2003) - “Emotional Design” – Don Norman (2004) - “Technology as Experience” – John McCarthy, Peter Wright (2004)

What is Experience-Centered Design? “User experience is about creating design focused on people's personal growth, so they can live in harmony with each other and with their natural and artificial environment.” - By Stefano Marzano, CEO of Philips Design “User experience goals differ from the more objective usability goals in that they are concerned with how users experience an interactive product from their perspective rather that assessing how useful or productive a system is from its own perspective” - Interaction Design (Preece, Rogers, Sharp, 2002) “User Experience Design fully encompasses traditional Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) design and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users. HCI design addresses the interaction between a human and a computer. In addition, User Experience Design addresses the user's initial awareness, discovery, ordering, fulfilment, installation, service, support, upgrades, and end-of-life activities.” - IBM website

Usability to User-Experience Usability Goals - Consistency - User-control - Flexibility - Error-prevention - Help - etc... User-Experience Goals - Enjoyment - Fun - Pleasure - Values - Emotions - etc… Objective goals to Subjective Goals

Why is Experience Important? Today’s computing technologies are now part of our day-to-day activities. They support diversity of roles such as entertainer (iTV, online Games), teacher (e-learning), sales-person (e-commerce), etc. Interacting with these technologies is as much about fun, pleasure, entertainment, personal identity, etc. as it is about goals, tasks and work. Advancement in technology – Complex devices Competitive Market: most products with similar price, technology, quality, etc. While interacting with a system users use three capabilities cognitive, perceptual-motor and emotional. And previously the designers have been focusing on functional an instrumental product qualities, exploiting mostly the cognitive skills

Characteristics of Experience John Dewey provides a Philosophical Account on Experience - Experience is subjective, holistic & temporal phenomenon - Users actively construct an experience in real-time and real- space, using meaning-making skills. - Environment plays an important part Four Conditions of Experience an experience is a result of the interaction between a live creature and the experienced object an experience has a beginning and an end an experience has a unity that gives it a name in an experience a user ‘does something’ to the object and in consequence he ‘undergoes something’

References Books Technology as Experience By McCarthy, J., Wright, P. MIT Press. Funology – From Usability to Enjoyment Blythe, M. (Ed.) Kluwer Publications. Art as Experience John Dewey. Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction Preece et al. Additional Readings Experience Prototyping. DIS-2000 The Building Blocks of Experience. DIS-2000 Understanding Experience in Interactive Systems. DIS-2004.

Thank You ! Further questions and queries are welcome. Dhaval Vyas Room T-304, Informatica Section Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam