What is involved in an experience?
There are 3 different types of experience:
Everyday – This is things that happen to you everyday that you don’t realise for example driving your car to work, eating everyday foods or even typing this post.
Recognised – This is an experience that you are aware of for example, travelling or a special day out.
Group Memory – This is an experience that you have with a number of people for instance a festival or going to the FA Cup.
An experience in you mind will not be the same as it was at the time, the mind will exaggerate the experience/memory.
We carried out an experiment asking each other what are their most remembered experience and why? They were generally big moments in people lives like doing things for the first time or a time when they felt pain for example when someone broke their leg playing football etc.
Examples of experience in design:
‘The Drinkable Book’ – It makes the audience want to participate, Its educational.
‘Alter Bahnhof Video Walk’ – Creates emotion, how you would feel as if you were in the same situation.
‘Fender American Design Experience’ – Being able to personalise something in your own way creates a feeling towards the object and is a very interactive website.
What do experiences have in common? How can we design for this?
‘Active engagement in a physical sense, not just mentally.’
‘Loss of ego and boundaries – no agenda (like an aesthetic experience)’
‘Designing for the experiences of others is like choreography or staging a show.’
‘Specific experienced cannot be guaranteed – like intentional fallacy.’
‘Experiences live beyond the object/artefact.’
‘Fluidity of experience and how it unfolds – stages (time, narrative, intensity, objects, spaces, textures).’
User co-designs or there is collaboration = interactive in some way.
BUT
Who’s is excluded from an experience? for example in high fashion, the affordability of the experience? With a website, would the target audience be able to view it (be able to afford broadband)?
Three key factors to take into concideration:
– Cognition – knowing/mental understanding
– Sensory Perception – (physical bodily feeling – touching, balance and senses)
– Emotion – affective domain
How can we measure or plan from experience?
Phenomenology:
– Both a methodology and philosophy
– Awareness of bodies in space
– When I do ‘this’ I feel like ‘this’ – Anything that affects us physically and emotionally.
Ethnography:
– The study of cultures/studying people as a culture
– The myths etc.
Semiotics – Things signify something – How people recognise cultural symbols?
Ideology – The assumptions – What is morally right or wrong?
Testing – When do people get involved with with what your designing?
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