Exploring Experience Design

Book description

Learn how to unify Customer Experience, User Experience and more to shape lasting customer engagement in a world of rapid change.

About This Book

  • An introductory guide to Experience Design that will help you break into XD as a career by gaining A strong foundational knowledge
  • Get acquainted with the various phases of a typical Experience Design workflow
  • Work through the key process and techniques in XD, supported by most of the common use cases

Who This Book Is For

This book is for designers who wish to enter the field of UX Design, especially Programmers, Content Strategists, and Organizations keen to understand the core concepts of UX Design.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand why Experience Design (XD) is at the forefront of business priorities, as organizations race to innovate products and services in order to compete for customers in a global economy driven by technology and change
  • Get motivated by the numerous professional opportunities that XD opens up for practitioners in wide-ranging domains, and by the stories of real XD practitioners
  • Understand what experience is, how experiences are designed, and why they are effective
  • Gain knowledge of user-centered design principles, methodologies, and best practices that will improve your product (digital or physical)
  • Get to know your X's and D's - understand the differences between XD and UX, CX, IxD, IA, SD, VD, PD, and other design practices

In Detail

We live in an experience economy in which interaction with products is valued more than owning them. Products are expected to engage and delight in order to form the emotional bonds that forge long-term customer loyalty:

Products need to anticipate our needs and perform tasks for us: refrigerators order food, homes monitor energy, and cars drive autonomously; they track our vitals, sleep, location, finances, interactions, and content use; recognize our biometric signatures, chat with us, understand and motivate us. Beautiful and easy to use, products have to be fully customizable to match our personal preferences.

Accomplishing these feats is easier said than done, but a solution has emerged in the form of Experience design (XD), the unifying approach to fusing business, technology and design around a user-centered philosophy.

This book explores key dimensions of XD: Close collaboration among interdisciplinary teams, rapid iteration and ongoing user validation. We cover the processes, methodologies, tools, techniques and best-practices practitioners use throughout the entire product development life-cycle, as ideas are transformed to into positive experiences which lead to perpetual customer engagement and brand loyalty.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
    1. What this book covers
    2. Who this book is for
    3. Reader feedback
    4. Customer support
      1. Downloading the color images of this book 
      2. Errata
      3. Piracy
      4. Questions
  2. Experience Design - Overview
    1. A day in the life and experiences of M
      1. The importance of usability 
      2. Less can be more 
      3. Task density
    2. Evolution of Design
    3. Summary
  3. The Experience Design Process
    1. Processes and change
      1. Evolving roles and processes
      2. Early models of design process
    2. Design, process, and the internet
      1. Browsers, search, and design
    3. From eye candy to user experience
      1. Needs to roles to processes
    4. Unified design process - experience is the product
      1. Unified experience design process model
    5. Summary
  4. Business and Audience Context
    1. Defining the business context
      1. Business needs - research activities
        1. Stakeholder and subject-matter expert interviews
        2. Product expert reviews
        3. Competitive research and analysis
    2. Defining the product - audience context
      1. Features versus experience
      2. Audience Research
      3. Audience segments and their characteristics
      4. Audience needs - research activities
        1. Online surveys
        2. Survey examples
    3. Summary
  5. The User and Context of Use
    1. Thinking about user needs and desires
    2. User research
      1. Card sorting
        1. Why use it in experience design?
        2. How to use it in experience design
        3. Pros
        4. Cons
      2. Contextual inquiries (CI)
        1. Why use it in experience design?
        2. How to use it in experience design?
        3. Pros
        4. Cons
      3. The diary or log method
        1. Why use it in experience design?
        2. How to use it in experience design?
        3. Pros
        4. Cons
        5. Focus groups and visioning workshops
        6. Why use it in experience design?
        7. How to use it in experience design?
        8. Pros
        9. Cons
      4. Surveys
        1. Why use it in experience design?
        2. How to use it in experience design?
        3. Pros
        4. Cons
      5. Web analytics and customer support logs
        1. Why use it in experience design?
        2. Pros
        3. Cons
    3. Establishing the context of use
      1. Personas
      2. Persona development workshops
      3. Task Analysis
      4. Scenarios and user stories
      5. Journey mapping
      6. Journey mapping workshops
    4. Summary
  6. Experience - Perception, Emotions, and Cognition
    1. The senses
      1. Vision and visual perception
    2. Expressions
    3. Gestures
      1. From seeing to making meaning
      2. Hearing and sound
        1. The power of sound
      3. Touch - The tactile sense
        1. Touch and texture
    4. Time
    5. Emotions and executive functions
    6. Individual and social
    7. Summary
  7. Experience Design Disciplines
    1. Mapping the disciplines
      1. Mapping common design themes
    2. Form and function
      1. Needs, function, and form
    3. Science fiction reality
    4. 2D surfaces and meaning
    5. Exterior and interior spaces - architecture
    6. Clothes, fabrics, and fashion
    7. Human factors (ergonomics)
    8. Time-based design disciplines
      1. Engineering and science in Experience Design
    9. Summary
  8. The Design Team
    1. Role of the designer
      1. The relationship designer
    2. Team configurations
    3. Meet an experience design practitioner
      1. Marlys Caceres - Visual Designer
      2. Eddie Chen - UX Engagement Lead
        1. About my work
      3. Dino Eliopulos - Design Leader
        1. Advice to those who consider a career in design
        2. How do you see the evolution of XD in general?
      4. Jay Kaufmann - Design Manager
        1. A career found me
        2. Management brought it together
        3. The work - designing design
        4. The profession - paying it forward
      5. Ritch Macefield, PhD - UX and IT Consultant
        1. The present
        2. The future
      6. Saikat Mandal - Architect, Experience Designer
      7. Christine Marriott, PhD - Architect
      8. Ross Riechardt - UX Designer
        1. Just start
      9. Derik Schneider - UI/UX Artist/Designer/Developer
        1. Young professional lone wolf
        2. Solid foundations and learning experiences
        3. Things have changed
        4. The degrees
        5. Wrap up
      10. Ginger Shepard - Product Manager
        1. Key activities
      11. Courtney Skulley - Visual Designer
        1. Key activities
        2. Artifacts
        3. Advice to those who consider a career in visual design
      12. Ken Stern, PhD - User Research Practice Lead
        1. Advice to someone who considers a career in experience design
      13. John Tinman - UX Designer
        1. My design process and key activities
        2. My advice and where I see this profession evolving
      14. Richard Tsai - UX Architect
    4. Summary
  9. Delight and Engagement
    1. Overview
    2. Functional and emotional design
      1. Visual and auditory experiences
        1. Visual design trends
        2. Skeuomorphic design
        3. Sequencing and directions
        4. Grabbing attention
        5. Data visualization
        6. Shaping experiences
      2. Conversational experiences
    3. The power of context
    4. Motivation
    5. Summary
  10. Tying It All Together - From Concept to Design
    1. Design philosophy 
      1. The past and future
      2. First impressions
      3. The "cookie cutter"
      4. Accessible design
    2. Concept development
      1. Activities
        1. Sketching
        2. Mind mapping
        3. Storyboards
      2. Designer versus collaborative design
    3. Refining concepts
      1. Prototyping
    4. Summary
  11. Design Testing
    1. Why test?
    2. R.T.G.D.M?
      1. Testing prototypes
      2. Hi-fidelity and low-fidelity prototypes
    3. Who should facilitate?
    4. Planning usability tests
      1. The test
        1. Test objectives
      2. The testing scenario
        1. Screen 1
        2. Screen 2
    5. Documenting test responses
    6. Recruiting participants
      1. The screener
        1. Introduction
        2. Validation and vetting
        3. Additional information and confirmation
    7. Testing considerations
      1. Fee versus free
      2. Insiders versus impartial
      3. Casual versus power users
    8. Test settings
      1. Moderated versus unmoderated
      2. Lab versus field testing
    9. Summary
  12. The Design Continuum
    1. Design continuity
    2. Experience platforms
    3. Design systems
    4. Wrapping up

Product information

  • Title: Exploring Experience Design
  • Author(s): Ezra Schwartz
  • Release date: August 2017
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781787122444