Blog Post #7: Experience Design

Many designers have found a rigid focus on usability design stifling to creativity on the Web. The incorporation of experimental navigational systems, animation, sound, high-end graphics, and multimedia elements are often left out of sites who focus on fast-loading pages and making things as easy as possible for the user. However, as broadband connections become increasingly common, so too have many designers become increasingly interested in creating user experiences on the Web; sites where users can do more than simply read a brochure or shop at a store. Companies and designers are discovering that the Web can also be a place for drama, emotion, and a branding experience. Such designers are working in a relatively new design area sometimes called "experience design."

In your own words, define experience design. What considerations would be important for you as a designer if you were designing a site that focuses on "experience." Can you find a site that is a good example of experience design? Why is it a good example and how does it differ from other sites? Like debates between form and function, designing for experience and designing for usability are frequently put at odds. Why is this? Do you think they are mutually exclusive? Or, can they coexist in design?


This is sort of the flip side of the previous post. The previous one was about usability, whereas this is about those who finds usability restrictions squelch creativity.

I do kind of agree, designing to make a site meet strict usability guidelines might take some of the fun out of web design. I'm better with creating content than with the visual design side of things right now though, so I might not mind so much personally, though I'm sure some of my visitors would.

For me, a site that focuses on "experience" would be one that has a lot to offer the visitor but isn't so flashy that it's overwhelming. A person doesn't want to be bored on a website, but they don't want to be overwhelmed either. This is particularly true for me because I am autistic, and autistic people are highly susceptible to sensory overload. A site's that too flashy might also be difficult for those with other sensory processing disorders, people who are easily distracted or who have disorders like ADD, people with visual disabilities who are using screen readers, and - if flashing pictures or lights are involved - those who are prone to photoelectric seizures. I also dislike sites that are flashy visually and have some kind of audio or music that autoplays when you arrive at the site. That can be a lot for me, especially if there is no obvious way to turn the music off, and particularly if it loops AND can't be turned off easily. I also find some custom cursors distracting - they can be fun but sometimes I may not want a trail of sparkles following my arrow around. (The music problem seems primarily present in older sites where people used MIDI files as background audio for their sites. This used to be the cool thing to do once upon a time. Now I think people have moved on).

Why are designing for usability and designing for experience at odds? I think for much the same reason rational scientists and not-as-rational artistic people end up at odds - those in each camp have different ways of thinking about how web design should be done. It's like those literary theorists who only care about the text and what you can get from the text itself (sometimes called the "the author is dead" camp because they evaluate the text on its own merit, ignoring the author) versus those who want to evaluate a text based on the author and his or her background, society, culture, reader's response, feminist views, etc. They just can't agree to disagree, so they butt heads. As I mentioned before, both viewpoints have merit. Which one is the better one remains to be seen. And at any rate things in the tech world are constantly in flux anyway. So I think they can peacefully coexist, if each group would stop making such a big fuss about the other's view.

And now, some examples of "experience design":

• Erin's Challenge! I Can Speak Japanese, the site I reviewed in my first post. That site provides a very full experience to anyone who wishes to learn the Japanese language. It's even been used to teach Japanese in a classroom setting, as their trailer in that post shows. And while it uses a lot of Flash, the overall design of the site is pretty minimalist, so it isn't too overwhelming.
• StarWars.com - The most recent version of the official Star Wars website is VERY streamlined. Yet the website still provides a lot of things for the user to do, the perhaps best well-known being the site's encyclopedia, which is the most detailed resource on Star Wars I've ever seen. One of my fave Sailor Moon websites, moonkitty.net, took its redesign cue from StarWars.com when trying to streamline its home page, but I think it still has too much distracting stuff in the sidebars to make the idea really work.
• The Great Gatsby - For NES - I was introduced to this site by a classmate in my American Lit 2 class, in which we were reading The Great Gatsby at the time. While the site does not provide a huge amount of user experience, just playing the game is fun in itself. As anyone who has read The Great Gatsby would know, it doesn't really have the kind of plot that would probably translate well to a video game, but somehow this game makes it work. And while it appears to have be a fan-created game (despite what the actual website says about it being on a NES cartridge the creator found at a yard sale), it does look like a real NES game and is pretty fun to play once you master the controls (which took me some time to do). 

That's all I really have to say about that. Until next time!