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When was the last time you had a really enjoyable experience with a product or service? Do you remember how it made you feel? Do you remember what about it made you feel that way? What about your experience stuck out most in your mind? If you are like me, some of these questions can be fairly difficult to answer, while others may be incredibly obvious. On top of this, the answers may seem clearer in one case than they do in another. Welcome to the world of experience design. This post is primarily taken from the first part of a presentation I made a BarCamp Nashville in 2009, entitled “Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences“.

Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties, so I do not have the video from my presentation. Hopefully though, you will be able to glean a little insight into developing a unique experience for your product or service.

What is Experience Design?

According to The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence, experience design (XP) is the practice of “designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design.”

Everybody say, “ooooohhhh, fancy.” Let’s boil this down into something a little easier to remember: experience design is the practice of form, not function. Now, before you race to the comments form, I am not saying form over function. The process of honing your product or service’s function is absolutely essential and should work in tandem with the development of your user experience. Both sides will continuously feed off of each-other.

What Are the Components of Experience Design?

Experience design is made up of six key components:

• Psychology
• Market Research
• Brand Management
• Information Design
• Interaction Design
• Visual Design

As you can see, these components span a wide array of skills. Don’t make the mistake of assuming experience design is the sole responsibility of your designer, usability expert, strategist, dog trainer, mother-in-law, or significant other to handle. Experience design is an inclusive process that involves every person on your team. It is a collaborative process that needs buy-in from every person that touches your project. With that in mind, let’s break down these components.

Psychology

Seek to understand your audience. Who are they? How do they think? What influencing factors shape their decision-making? What types of things evoke emotions from them? Why do people do the things they do? These are all questions you should ask yourself when determining the direction of your experience design.

Market Research

Know your playing field. What are your competitors’ strengths? What are their weaknesses? What have they tried in the past? Identifying these things can save you time identifying potential pitfalls. More importantly, this market research will also help you shape a unique experience that sets you apart from the rest of the herd.

Brand Management

You must have a good grasp of your brand. In this age social media, it may seem like you are not in control, but don’t make the mistake of leaving your brand to chance. You have the ability to control your brand as well as the ability to shape the perception of that brand. I promise you, this is not going to be easy. There are countless books and blog posts written about this very subject, and I definitely do not have all the answers.

Customer service is one aspect of brand management that is easy to overlook when focusing on function instead of experience. Remember the last time you got off the phone with a company and were so mad you wanted to hit something? How do you feel about that company now? Manage your brand well, or you may end up on consumerist.com’s “Worst Company in America” tournament bracket.

Information Design

What information do you want to disseminate, and how will you organize it? Construct your information in a clear, easy to understand hierarchy. Don’t dilute your information with unnecessary fluff. Find the core of your message, and stick to it.

Interaction Design

How will users interact with your experience? This is your opportunity to be creative! I am extremely impressed with the influx of augmented reality on mobile devices. For example, if you have a compatible device, check out the Amazon Mobile application.

The new “Amazon Remembers” feature allows you to snap a picture of an object and receive related products that Amazon carries. This is a new, easy, and unique way to shop on your phone.

I also consider usability design a part of interaction design. Without good usability design, your users cannot interact with your product or service and will ultimately leave with a bad impression of your brand.

Visual Design

What is the visible face of your product or service? What will it look like? Don’t assume that a good logo is all you need. Keeping a consistent, well designed visual look to your logo, print collateral, website, packaging, etc. will help consolidate and unite your brand’s image. Visual design can help shape the perception of your product or service. Take a look at the visual design of any investment firm or financial management institution. Generally speaking, the design will convey stability and order, because they want you to feel at ease when entrusting them with your money.

What’s The Point?

You may be asking yourself, “why do I have to be concerned with all of this? My product stands on it’s own.” This may be true — your product or service may be so revolutionary that it rises to the top of our collective consciousness purely on the power of it’s own awesomeness. For the rest if us, we are going to have to invest a lot of hard work, time, and energy in making it to the top. Case in point: there are 187 million websites in the world. That means, if your site is an “one in a million” experience, there’s 187 other sites that are just as unforgettable. If you hope to rise to the top and elicit tangible customer interaction, you must constantly focus on the design of your product or service’s experience.