July 5th, 2008, posted in Design, User Experience
I finally got Pine & Gilmore’s newer book, Authenticity, which motivated me to actually finish reading their other book, The Experience Economy. I really enjoy the straightforward way they present their material in the Experience Economy. They make the business case VERY clear, people are simply willing to pay more, a lot more for experiences than goods or services. They seem to have some good research to back up their numbers, and honestly my experience says it’s true, people are willing to pay more for experiences.
The first thing that I want to point out is that almost all the examples in the book, Disney, themed restaurants like Rainforest Cafe and others are not exactly cheap places to go to. For many middle-class Americans these kinds of experiences are not something that happens often, for the working class and the working poor, they are but dreams, or one-in-a-lifetime kind of events. Yet the authors continually push their business case, you can charge more for your experiences, they advocate again and again that businesses charge admission (perhaps not much, but something) to even come in, let alone shop or eat or what have you.
The question I have is: what about designing great experiences for the middle and working class? Is there no room for that? Also what do Pine & Gilmore think about the business that must exist to sell those commodities, good, and services? Should they all be sensorialized, and made into experiences?
I guess what I’m saying is that I would love to see a really great experience that doesn’t charge a lot. Is that even economically feasible the way Pine & Gilmore imagine it? I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’ll post again as I continue along.
July 1st, 2008, posted in Design, HCI, Philosophy of Technology, User Experience
I am part-way through Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experience, and I’ve read part of the Experience Economy, and of course my course last year on Experience Design. Add to that the UK’s Design Council finding that businesses that use design thinking and methods are more successful than their counterparts. Of course I am totally fascinated by what is happening with NextD, and using design to inquire and innovate.
Certainly F@astCompany and BusinessWeek have both picked up on the idea of design, but I’m surprised that this isn’t more widely talked about.
Now add to the mix some of the papers that have come out of the HCI community of practice about research through design and I start wonder. It seems like design is being used in all kinds of disparate contexts, so disparate I wonder if there is any unifying thread to what is being called design?
I of course turn to Nelson & Stolterman’s The Design Way for answers. They want the book to explain what design is, to instill design culture and design thinking, and I hope to find at least a preliminary answer to my question in this rereading of the question.
If I can answer more simply what design is in all these contexts, I would like to answer the question that has been riddling me for months now: what is the philosophical basis of design (if indeed it has one)? What can research by design rightly say?
All this come back to my original start point, how does design methodology and thinking really impact business? What is it that moves forward like so many think it does? I think it has something to do with what design is, and where it comes from theoretically.
