MIT Experience Design Course Overview

The Definition

Experience design is the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevan t solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design.

From Wikipedia:

The Definition

Experience design is the practice of designing something with quality and cultural relevance.

More to the point:

The Definition

To design something that a user perceives to be culturally relevant and of high quality, the end product needs to make their life better – needs to solve their problems (even ones they didn’t know they had.)

How do you do that?

The Definition

Experience design is the practice of solving problems.

Ultimately:

There is an Established, Evolving Approach 1. Problem Definition 3. Secondary User Research 5. Persona Definition 6. Flows + Storyboards 7. Site + Taxonomy Maps 8. Wireframes + Comps 9. Usage Testing 4. Competitive Research 2. Primary User Research

From Designing Products to Solving Problems

Course Overview:

Playing games to learn the tools we use to design:

Wireframes

Sitemaps

Engagement Maps

Storyboards

Research

Touring the social world to find context for our designs:

“ Social” discussions

Competitive and Audience Research

Hands-on Business Workshop with ByKids.org

Exploring the future to practice designing without a net:

Digital Trends presentations

Solving Your Problems Exercises and Discussion

Wireframes Are a visual representation of a web page’s key content elements and how they are displayed to the user. Elements may include navigation, content placement and interface controls. The wireframe is not intended to capture every item on a page or represent the creative design. Rather, it is a skeletal depiction of what the page will ultimately contain and how those pieces will be laid out. Page © 2008 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Sitemaps Sitemaps provide an overview of website content in a manner similar to the table of contents page in a book. Sections and pages are typically listed according to narrative flow, alphabetically or by chronology. The home page appears at the top, with secondary and tertiary-level pages below. Page © 2008 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Storyboards Storyboards are simple, illustrative descriptions of the key interaction points that occur during a specific process or flow and between a user and the product or UI. They provide a quick, sketch-based way to explore what’s important about a product’s design and what elements will enable and create flow within it, without distracting the team with the overwhelming details of individual page design. Page © 2008 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Research Methodologies Any good design process requires research to understand a subject and to test hypothesis about an approach to a subject. It’s important to know and employ a wide range of methods to find the right answers or know where to keep on searching. Page © 2008 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Context, human texture, semantics, subjectivity

Definitive conclusions, clear measures, objectivity

Typical set-up:

Often in person, observation and discussion-oriented, even with task completion

Often remote, test plan structured around clear objective responses without ambiguity (yes/no, multiple choice, success/failure)

Provides:

The why, why not, where not, when not

The what, how much, when, where

Downfall:

Directionality can be skewed by sample size, personalities

Can be looking at the wrong measures.

Sample Size

8-12 provide directionality/patterns

100+ (technically 30, but numbers normalize better above 100)

Examples

Ethnographic studies

One-on-one interviews

Lab-style usability tests

Focus groups

Card sorting (in person)

Mouse-and-click-path tracking

Multivariate testing

Self-directed remote usability testing

Analytics + search log tracking

Surveys

Card sorting (remote)

Course Greatest Hits

Dig into the tools . . .

Sitemaps, wireframes, engagement maps, storyboards, research

Delve into the context . . .

Social phenomenon in an online context, competitive and audience research, dealing with clients

Explore the big picture . . .

Intelligent data, visualization (tension between complexity and simplification), physical devices, participation, democratization

For Further Exploration Page © 2008 Razorfish. All rights reserved. Razorfish Resources Industry Resources Razorfish Digital Design Blog http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/ Razorfish Going Social Now Blog http://www.goingsocialnow.com/ Our Twitters/Profiles http://twitter.com/marisagallagher http://twitter.com/ TED Conference: http://www.ted.com/ Favourite Website Awards: http://www.favouritewebsiteawards.com/ Ad Age Creativity Online: http://creativity-online.com/ Under the Radar Blog: http://www.undertheradarblog.com/ Mashable: http://mashable.com/ TV: http://newteevee.com/

Thank You