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The Experience Imperative: A Manifesto for Industrial Designers, by Ken Fry
Even though I've been practicing interaction design for most of my career, it is my industrial design experience that has enabled me to straddle the worlds of both hardware and software. Over the years I've seen interaction design thrive while the industrial design profession has gone into decline. I think we need to challenge the practice of industrial design. We need to adopt new behaviors to make the discipline healthy again.
At its core, industrial design has been about creating objects of desire. For nearly a century we've reinforced this understanding by celebrating the superficial beauty of the industrial designed artifact and forgetting the human context in which that artifact lives. Too often designers ignore how people interact with products over time, the cultural relevance of the artifacts they create, and the social and environmental consequences of their design decisions. We've allowed this malady to infect our schools and seduce our customers. The problem is pervasive. We need to do more than attach new words to our definition of industrial design. We need to redefine what industrial design means.
We need to do more than attach new words to our definition of industrial design. We need to redefine what industrial design means.
The impetus for change is not new. Industrial designers had the opportunity to examine their role the first time an empty shampoo bottle was thrown into the trash destined for the landfill. Or the first time an arthritic hand was unable to open a refrigerator door. Or the first time a camera failed to capture a fleeting emotion on film. While the physical object is essential in each of these situations, it is the larger experience with these products that is most meaningful to the people who use them.
The good news is that many industrial designers already embrace the ideas described here. Even though the situation demands a change to the discipline, the industrial designer is well-suited to serve the demands of this new age. The time has come for industrial designers to redefine their profession. Here are ten ways to make that happen.
1. Design beautiful experiences, not beautiful artifacts History is littered with beautiful objects that are culturally offensive, socially anemic, environmentally irresponsible, useless, or unusable. Consider all of the contexts of the artifact that you create: How is the product used over time? Where does it live? Who uses it? How does it fulfill the practical needs of the person using it? And consider all of the meanings behind the artifact: What are the emotional, cultural, social, and environmental impacts of the product? The physical artifact will be trivial without considering these larger contexts and meanings; indeed, they are what define the experience. Think beyond the object and consider all of these contexts of use. Apply a design process that helps you learn about these contexts and experiences. Work toward an experience-oriented solution instead of an object-based result.
2. Stop asking "what" and start asking "why" Designers are often asked to design an object that adheres to the strict guidelines of a brief. If the industrial designer only considers "what" they are asked to design, they enter into a design problem blindly, and the result will be an artifact that has been stripped of everything that is meaningful to people. The next time you receive a brief that tells you what to build, ask "why": Why would someone be motivated to use this product? Why is it necessary to build a product for this particular market landscape? Why embrace a particular technology? The answers you get will open up new possibilities that go beyond the physical product and into the realm of experience. Asking "why" will take you to the edges of the product where experiences live.
3. Start with experience, end with experience Understand and empathize with a person's real experience before a single sketch is put to paper. Try to understand people who don't rely on technology today. How might that inform a new design solution? First, go into the homes and workplaces of the customers you are designing for. Observe and understand what motivates them. Document what they say and what they do. Next, describe the experience using words. Develop a written narrative that represents the experience you observed. Focus on functionality and behavior. Finally, create an experience that would delight the people you met. Prototype several solutions, watch how people experience your designs, understand their point of view, and develop a new design solution that enables a meaningful experience.
4. Genius will fail, wisdom will succeed. Become wise In his book The Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dorner suggests "Geniuses are geniuses by birth, whereas the wise gain their wisdom through experience. The ability to deal with problems in the most appropriate way is the hallmark of wisdom rather than genius." It simply isn't possible to derive a good design solution without understanding the experiences of the people you are designing for. Great design is the product of wisdom, not genius. Become immersed in the experiences of your users. Do what they do. Live where they live. Become sensitive to their needs and pain points. Become wise.
The challenge is not to design an object, but to design an object that changes dynamically and adapts over time. This requires a new approach to design.
5. Keep it simple It's hard to design a simple artifact or experience that is rich and meaningful for the person using it. Start by teasing out the complexities of a product's value and context by understanding where it lives and how it's used. Then, simplify the design by reducing the clutter, cutting unnecessary features, and removing steps in a task. Work together with the members of your team, informing yourselves through research, thoughtfulness, and discipline. Put the words of John Maeda into practice: "Knowledge makes everything simpler."
6. From design thinking to dynamic thinking Physical products aren't frozen in time. The design process doesn't end at the moment a solution leaves the designer's hands or when the product leaves the factory floor. Products are living artifacts that change and adapt as they are used. The moment a product is purchased by a customer, it takes on new characteristics. This can happen in overt ways ("I've written my name on my new water bottle"), passive ways ("my water bottle is dented from the dozens of times I've dropped it on the floor"), and profound ways ("my behavior has changed now that I have a water bottle to drink from throughout the day"). The challenge is not to design an object, but to design an object that changes dynamically and adapts over time. This requires a new approach to design. Sketch the design in use, over time, with storyboards. Sketch the behavior of the product. Sketch the way the product responds to the context of the user and the environment. Design how it engages and communicates.
7. Let iteration direct your process: Work more rapidly, change more frequently Don't expect to get the design right the first time you put pencil to paper. If good product design requires multiple iterations, then good experience design requires even more iterations. Why? Because experience design is complex. The things we design exist in a system of user motivations and behaviors, and within contextual constraints and opportunities. Work more rapidly and change more frequently to solve for this complexity. Rough out the design quickly as a sketch and put it in front of people. Then refine it. Put it in front of people again, and refine it again. Don't be afraid to shift your design goals as you progress.
8. Have fun Great products are fun to experience, so make them fun to design. Not only do our design solutions need to incorporate moments of delight, engagement, play, and reward, but so do our design behaviors and practices. Remove the burden of adhering to tired processes, and think creatively about how you can make the process of creation fun. Turn your design activities into games and get your whole team involved.
9. Adapt your process to your design goals, not the other way around. Industrial design processes have evolved and matured over the last hundred years. The industrial designer who is only focused on the physical object will rely on these tried and true methods. But today people demand more from products. We need to turn the process on its head and become more flexible: adapt the process to the design problem, and stop compromising the user experience by adhering to old practices.
10. Preserve the experience, not your own competency Our tendency is to preserve our own competence when faced with a design problem that is unfamiliar or ambiguous. We need to resist that urge, and seek out new competence. Discover the meaning behind the experiences you create by consulting with people who aren't like you. Talk to the ethnographer who is expert at observing people in their real environment. Work with the interaction designer who can envision product and people behaviors over time. And once you have freed yourself of the chains of competency, consider changing your title.
Call yourself an experience designer.
Ken Fry is Design Director at Artefact, a design consultancy that works with a variety of high tech consumer electronics, communications, and computer software clients to research user needs and design breakthrough software and technology products. Prior to joining Artefact he spent most of his 12 years at Microsoft leading user experience groups across Microsoft hardware and consumer software groups. He also helped define design and research standards and practices to help other teams at Microsoft create products and services that people love.
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Apart from that it's about time we killed (once more) the various qualifiers, whether “industrialâ€, “graphicsâ€, “interactionâ€, or “experience†and just simply(?) talked about design. As designers we should think about problems and solutions, not about “media†(in the broader sense). Not quite a new idea, either – see e. g. how the Eames' worked (far from being the only ones, just a prototypical example).
@Victor Bogatch: Apart from what I said above, I couldn't care less whether something was “new†or not, Just about it being necessary, appropriate, relevant, meaningful, valuable, etc. And, maybe sadly, this article still IS.
Everybody likes to preach. Say something NEW.
But come on?! Experience Design? I get the joke, but I suspect most people won't. How is this?
Call yourself a "Maker".
Good to hear about you. It's been a long time since our MS Hardware days back in Redmond. Great article and great insight into the experiences that formed your views.
I myself have been almost weeded out of the ID field (even though most of the products I designed were very successful). After shipping dozens of products for MS and others, I slowly but surely found myself searching for meaning in this profession. The current green design movement has infused some life back into the field but in general most of the "green" products out there I find are still superficial manifestations of marketing agendas.
Today I live in the Chilean Patagonia and offer creative outsourcing services (strictly on-line) SaaS UI's and social media mostly...and have also used my design skills to launch a few start-ups.
www.es-salmonleather.com
www.pullcolab.com
In my view the most important aspect of industrial design is the process. This process can be applied to almost any field that required problem solving, especially in areas such sustainable development where my passion has always been (even when no one was talking about it, you remember my obsession with Bucky and Biomimicry)...
I think the bottom line is well put by Adrian "do not need flashy renderings or self-conscious, fame-seeking personalities, but rigorous intellectual training, strong analytical skills and a high degree of personal culture in many subjects"
Just like business school does not prepare you consider all the sociocultural aspects of building a business, neither does design school prepare you for the real challenges and responsibilities that come with the ID profession.
Well, I don't remember if this was influenced by you or not but I have been calling myself an experience designer for years... still 90% of clients (100% in S.America) hire ID professionals because of our superior aesthetic sensibility and not for our ability to influence and define cultural progress in a meaningful way.
Adrian: great points. Industrial designers often find themselves in the unfortunate role of contributing to this problem of rampant consumerism. Even though industrial design represents a tiny part of the larger issue, we may be contributing to the problem with what we teach designers. I think there is hope for the designer who wants to do more than satiate consumer desires. Consider how some emerging societal trends will affect design. We are already seeing how mass media and mass production have become less relevant to consumers as they gain more control over how they consume things. "Happiness" trends suggest people are becoming increasingly aware that their consumptive behavior will not lead to happiness. The rise of alternate economies is putting more of the power to buy and sell (and barter and swap) into the hands of consumers. There’s also the green movement which is beginning to encourage the growth of new markets that focus on neutralizing the damaging effects of consumer behavior and waste. I think even if a designer finds themselves in an organization where they are filling orders as you say, they still have the choice and ability to effect the outcome by adopting some of the new behaviors I suggest. It may not be possible to affect larger organizational or business change, but the designer can change his or her individual behavior.
Why label oneself as an Industrial designer, experience designer etc etc. I beleive this to be the problem. too often do I see individuals consultancies, businesses and portfolios striving to define what it is they do, why be so pre-occupied? Why need a label? your experience, passion and self should define what you are.
As designers (If Adrian will allow us to be called this) we should be practising a multitude of skill sets areas anyway right? To be successful in the market, a product must possess a wide range of features and benefits. Designers must have an understanding of all of these to have a sucessful, fruitful career. We must become chamelion. Are we saying that we would turn down some pure mechanical engineering work involving maths, because that wouldn't look good on a forget me not to a potential employer? Are we then saying we don't just want to be 'felt tip fairies' that are shoehorned into the process once the function of the product, system, whatever has been defined? Of course were not saying that. So the question is not what is Industrial design becoming, more, what do YOU want it to be?
So lets stop the pigeon holing, and literally 'roll with the puches'. Learn the new skills that will allow you to have input where you want to give it, hone your current skills and express them fully when required to display competency, but don't force them when it is not needed. If you come across an area of design you have no experience of, then gain some, or be left in the hole with the rest of the pigeons.
I've left out a lot of people but the point is that designers are a very small part of the equation. Maybe we're just arrogant because we conceive the products. The people that need to hear this message are the sales and marketers. I believe they have more influence over companies than designers do. If they could influence GM to make the Pontiac Aztek, they can convince anyone to make anything.
Such a great post, I agree with all your points.
I trained in industrial product design and subsequently went into digital design after graduating when the industrial design industry was going into decline. I saw many similarities in designing for the web as designing physical products, especially in interaction design.
All too often people, certainly in the digital world don't grasp the point and have a very shallow understanding of how to approach design. Many web designers are employed to simply put pretty things on a page. I find myself asking "why" all the time but many people don't seem to understand just why I want to ask and seem to think I should just accept that "thats how it is".
Very inspirational!
Thanks,
Andy
As a graduate student I completely agree with what you've said. When I look around me all I can see are people who care more about pretty pictures in their reports and posters, colourful post-its, flashy sketches and artistic appearance; all covered in a nice coat of bullshit stories.
I'm so tired of that world and was starting to worry that maybe I had chosen to wrong profession, since I personally love to tackle problems and hate the hours that I have to spend to make some clean renders and fake quick sketches just for the product to be noticed.
From the promising and visionary profession ID was in the postwar years (that's WWII for our younger readers), it is now essentially an add-on activity subordinated to the Sales & Marketing departments of corporate America. The majority of professional designers lucky enough to be employed in the first place have nowhere near the degree of control over their creations that your (lovingly idealistic) musings seem to suggest. They fill orders, to be precise. And in today's job market, who can blame them?
What's more, speed trumps everything now in all industries. The rationale used in most firms (and, sadly, even by many seasoned designers) is why invest so much of yourself, so much thinking, passion and research into people's lives when the artifacts at the end of the line have such short lifespans? Why obsess over "the experience" when buyers, clients and consumers have become so capricious and moody? Why indeed produce more stuff when your spoiled customers are already drowning in barely-used objects?
A child who's always had every single toy in the store is numbed to anything new but will quickly throw a tantrum if his addiction is not continually satisfied. This is where traditional ID is today, largely through no fault of its own, other than having allowed itself to be pushed sideways by the more pragmatic and practical among us.
Designers are so naive to still think you can be an "artiste" in today's business world and eat regular meals. The worlds of business and industry do not need artists but, increasingly, creative problem-solvers for product issues that are not at all glamorous and rarely show well in portfolios since they are frequently non-visual. Designers could be educated to resolve many such particular product challenges (but not only) that engineers or marketing staff either miss, are uninterested or unable to tackle.
Product aesthetics is already a very tiny and highly mobile niche job market coveted by many but occupied by very few. Paradoxically, it seems the target of most designers today, whether students or experienced. This is the definition of career suicide when opportunities for a new "design" profession abound and, if anything, are only increasing. They are, however, relatively immaterial and do not need flashy renderings or self-conscious, fame-seeking personalities, but rigorous intellectual training, strong analytical skills and a high degree of personal culture in many subjects. In other words, precisely the training most ID schools still do not provide in the 21st century. That could form the core of a new field and keep very busy at least those graduate designers willing to forfeit the tired media-fed "misunderstood artist" lifestyle for a more stable livelihood with less flash but measurable impact on the lives of many, not just a fortunate few.
So, while I agree with your points, Ken, I still think the doctor has come too late. It could have been great medicine had anyone "rescued" design from its current mediocrity (and impending obsolescence) some 20-30 years ago. What aspiring designers need now is not more inapplicable advice on how to save the old way of doing things, but the courage to build the foundations for an entirely new creative profession in tune with future economic and social models and, while at it, stop calling it "design".