Book Image

Exploring Experience Design

By : Ezra Schwartz
Book Image

Exploring Experience Design

By: Ezra Schwartz

Overview of this book

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 (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Dedication
Preface

Thinking about user needs and desires


Products and services existed for centuries, but user research is relatively new. In the past, the needs of most people were limited to the bare essentials. Most needs were supplied locally, and exposure to nonlocal goods has been limited to sporadic visits of traveling salesmen and their small inventory. The wealthy were exposed to exotic materials, spices, and foods, which were imported in small quantities from other lands.

Over the past three centuries, the advent of industrialization, mixed with improved economic conditions and increased prosperity of large populations in developed countries, led to exponential growth in manufacturing capabilities, consumer demand for nonessential products, and companies that make and sell them. With the increase in the number of companies came competition, which requires companies to differentiate themselves and their products from similar offerings.

A common form of differentiation used to focus on beating competing...