Just what do UX designers design?
If experiences are evoked as a natural reaction to the world, then User-Experience design isn’t really about designing the experience so much as it is about designing the users’ “world” in such a way that it evokes a specific experience. We can’t force experiences, we can only encourage them.
How many times have you walked up to a door handle as you exit a building, grab the handle and pull, only to be surprised that the door doesn’t open. Then you see it, the little sign above the handle that says PUSH. You look around, hoping that no one saw your minor failure. Frustrated, you push the door handle and exit the building.
Did you happen to notice all of the emotions that were experienced? Surprise, hope, failure, and frustration. All because of a door handle. Now, imagine that instead of a handle, that door had a flat panel. As you walked up and pushed the panel, the door opened and you exited the building without so much as thought.
Which design evokes a desirable experience? Interestingly, the door panel evokes almost no experience, at all. When you think about it, though, something as simple as a door should be pretty much transparent. If something as simple as a door requires instructions, there’s something inherently wrong with the design.
Good design evokes either positive or transparent experiences, yet bad designs evoke negative experiences. Good design isn’t always about designing good experiences as much as it is just avoiding bad experiences. You shouldn’t have to experience a door, but, if you’ve ever experienced a negative feeling about something that you used, then it was poorly designed. Can you recall a bad experience with a product you recently used? Can you name a product that doesn’t evoke any bad experiences?
Animal trainers can’t and don’t train animals to do “tricks.” They find ways to encourage the animal to repeat a behavior they are naturally inclined to perform in the wild. The same holds true for user-experience designers. We find ways to encourage users to perform behaviors they are already inclined to perform, given the right stimuli and knowing what response is expected for that stimuli.
Good user-experience design applies stimuli, that evoke specific and desired behaviors. UX design is a combination of understanding the inclinations, predilections, expectations, and intuitive behaviors common to the intended user population and knowing how various artifacts in the world evoke specific emotions or experiences. We don’t design experiences. We design the world that evokes experiences.
