From User Experience to Experience Design

Abstract

This paper aims to propose the idea that experience as content of design rather than contexts of use to explore the nature and attributes of experiences; to look for different positions or opportunities for designing experiences, and, to explain the paradigm shift from user experience design to designing experiences. Comparative literature review and framework building were combined through narrative inquiry. Experience as content of design has three interconnected parts: expectation, event and impact. Expectation is the driving force of action. Event is the process of action that consists of conditions of action and a self-interpretive process of creation by the participants. And impact is the meaningful closure of an experience after activities such as memory precipitation, story construction and meaning forming. From perspective of scale(individual and social) and length(instant and long-term) of effect, positioning for experience design may include user experience design, designing life, trend and culture building. From user experience design and designing experiences, experience has shifted from principles of product and service design to the subject of change; and, designers have become enablers that created opportunities for participants to determine their own course of events and to discover meanings of their lives.