Context as a system, product as a component, and the relationship as experience

Abstract

Currently, User Experience Design (UXD) is spotlighted as one of the most topical areas in design. It is an umbrella term that explains all aspects of a user's experience with a given context, including the interface, graphic design, industrial design, and interaction (Merholz P., 2007). Particularly, the notion of UXD is rooted in human factors and ergonomics that focus on physical, cognitive and emotional interaction between human users, machines and a contextual environment. In the industrial design field, the idea of UXD is not a new but an ancient concept that has been discussed in different terms such as ergonomics, anthropometrics, and affordance, etc., and whose main focus is a positive and rich experience. The current development of SNS (Social Networking Services) and smartphone technology, however, has created possibilities for new types of user experience design. Sander (Sanders, 2002) mentions this possibility as new design space where "designers will transform from being designers of "stuff" (e.g., products, communication pieces, etc.) to being the builders of scaffolds for experiencing.", and where industrial designers will now confront different challenges to discover and develop new types of products with different interface designs for novel user experience. For example, tablet computers like the Apple iPad already have changed the activity of computing from a static environment to almost everywhere. Based on the theoretical framework that "a context as a system, a product as a component, and the relationship between them as an experience", we propose three main research questions. These questions are 1) how a current professional UX designer in practice has redefined UX design themselves, 2) what specific actions are performed and 3) what supports they provide for their client. Through careful in-depth interviews with seven professional UX designers in experience-centric design firms, including IDEO and Adaptive Path etc., in US and Canada, we propose several critical notions and foundational references for UX designers. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.