What Are We Designing Again?
On Core77, Ken Fry, a Director at Artefact, discusses 10 ways to accelerate the remaking of industrial design into experience design. Some of his remarks point towards designing for how minds really work (cognitive design). There is a call for a focus on emotion, user motivations, the meaning behind the artifact, low cognitive load (keep it simple) and so on. A sample:
”1. Design beautiful experiences, not beautiful artifacts
History is littered with beautiful objects that are culturally offensive, socially anemic, environmentally irresponsible, useless, or unusable. Consider all of the contexts of the artifact that you create: How is the product used over time? Where does it live? Who uses it? How does it fulfill the practical needs of the person using it? And consider all of the meanings behind the artifact: What are the emotional, cultural, social, and environmental impacts of the product? The physical artifact will be trivial without considering these larger contexts and meanings; indeed, they are what define the experience. Think beyond the object and consider all of these contexts of use. Apply a design process that helps you learn about these contexts and experiences. Work toward an experience-oriented solution instead of an object-based result.”
In cognitive design, we view an experience as a themed set of mental states that may be private or shared. The goal is to design to achieve a specific set of mental states throughout the life cycle of the artifact. So there is some common ground between cognitive and experience design.
