HCI VISTAS, VOLUME-I, 2006-2007

 

The Paradox of User Experience Design

 

Dr. Dinesh S. Katre

Article INS-5./June 2006
User Experience Design has become popular and gaining a lot of acceptance in IT industry. Recent thought sharing on 'roles and processes' involved in User Experience Design on Yahoo Group has made me ponder over it more seriously, as the participants have been discussing 'Usability Engineering' under the title of 'User Experience Design'. I see some misconstrued areas, especially when one uses this term as synonymous to usability engineering or claims to be inclusive of it. By doing this, I feel that we are placing usability on a non-scientific, non-engineering and highly subjective pedestal, which is quite contrary to what usability stands for.
 
I consider usability as the most fundamental design activity that can impact the basic idea of product and the way you would engineer it. It can produce the most disruptive and novel technological innovations. For example, the invention of mobile phones is a result of the usability perspective of inventors. It is not like a cosmetic treatment for software products to make them look nice. Conversely, the user experience design focuses greatly on the things at visceral level. It is also an important aspect of any product design or service design. But then it is a separate activity. How? Let us try to find it.
 
A few questions burn my heart. Aren't we trivializing usability by making it a sub-component of user experience design? Secondly, UX designers need to question themselves, what different things they do to design an experience? Or is it just another form of graphic design? We make the software look neat and clean. It is an important thing, no doubt about it, but is that enough to call it as User Experience Design? I asked myself, whom do I regard as the best experience designer? Which was the most well designed experience I had recently? I ask you the same question.
 
Initially, I felt that everyone in this world is crafting an experience or contributing to it; be it good or bad, pleasant or torturous, ordinary or extra-ordinary, smooth or irritating, slow or fast. It is true. But who gave me the well-designed / well-crafted experience? Frankly speaking, no name of software product came to my mind. I did not think of any software tools that I use regularly. Many of them are very effective and usable. I can rate them in terms of usability. But did they offer me any concrete experience? No!
 
But I thought of Sanjay Lila Bhansali, the great movie director of Black and Devdas. He really designed different experiences through these movies. I thought of horror movies that did not scare me (poor quality of user experience design). I thought of computer games that make my kid struggle and feel the adventures. I hear him shouting while crossing the hurdles in the game. I remembered the interiors of some restaurants, which remind you of ancient Indian architecture and traditions. I remembered the set designs of dramas, which crafted an experience for every type of scene. I thought of Nitin Desai, who designs highly exotic and experiential sets for films and television programs. I thought of 'Kingfisher experience' as Dr. Vijay Mallya calls it in the ad-reel. Recently, the airhostess of Jet Airways surprised me by calling me by my name! More personalized attention to passengers! These are concrete examples of UX designers and User Experience Design. Are we dealing with such concrete experience in software?
 
When a middle-class person constructs a house, he is keen on ensuring the functional and usable aspects of the house. He has no budget for interior design, which significantly contributes to the overall experience of living in the house. This example reveals that the functionality and usability are indispensible. But user experience design is an exotic thing and a separate layer of activity for some products.
 
If you look at the Kingfisher experience, a well-crafted experience, it is beyond the functional and usable aspects of an airline service. It involves wide range of things like, the welcoming of passengers and escorting them to the counter, Dr. Mallya referring the aircraft as his home, addressing passengers as his personal guests, helping old people at the airport, dress code of air-staff, the manner of talking and interacting, food service, television programs, flight magazine, and several other things.
 
The bottom line is that we must understand the difference between User Experience Design and Usability Engineering. I strongly believe that-

The territory of user experience design begins,

where the territory of functionality and usability ends.

It is the icing on the cake and not the cake itself!

 

Fulfilling the tasks and objectives in absence

of any experience is ultimate 'usability'.

 

Of course you may categorize the outcome as 'good' experience. As most UX designers refer 'user opinion' as 'user experience'. But it is not so much of an experience from the perspective of 'user experience design'. Basically, the storytelling media, such as movies, computer games that can not compress the time and the process, are more suitable for UED. To understand the flip side of this topic, you may like to go through some thinking on User Inexperience Design in the next article.
 
 

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Perspectives
* I strongly believe that the territory of experience design begins, where the territory of functionality and usability ends*
I strongly disagree with this statement and the entire purview of your article. User experience design encompasses form and functionality, content, branding, usability and its accessibility. Usability engineering is just a part of the entire process leading to a user experience.

Kingfisher experience which you have cited in your article is a good experience because it is usable and functional. Had the service not been usable by its intended audience, it would turn out to be a bad user experience. Usability is woven into an entire experience. It is a sub-component of the user experience design.

If the softwares we design do not lead to good user experiences then the responsible project managers and the design team needs to mull over their strategy.
 
Harshada Deshpande
While I agree with the subject, I see an overlap of Customer Experience and User Experience. In some cases like Google or movie, an individual may experience both, but in most software related cases they could be different. Even when it is the same individual, he may be a happy user but not a happy customer and vice versa. [I may be happy as a Photoshop user, but may not be as Adobe customer] The CXP increases the monetary/brand value. The UXP increases the Productivity/Usage. And I feel, the User experience is more important of the two in the long run. There is a thin line that separates both.
 
The reason, Kingfisher or Black or restaurant experience is good is because, those designers have/had the power to design things as they conceptualized it. They had absolute powers to design or change different components of experience design. [Strategic, Technical, Tactical, and Creative]
Strategic: Vijay Mallya talking in the Ad.
Technical: Support the Air Hostess got, to know Dr.Dinesh's name on board
Tactical: Sanjay Bhansali evoking emotional response in his movies.
Creative: Reminder of Indian Tradition in restaurant

So where does that leave our User experience designers. How many of us have the 'Power' to craft the whole user experience atleast not counting the customer experience.

At the most, many of us may be able to change some of tactical and a little bit of creative design. [There are more constraints to creative design compared to other designs.] Not many us can/will be able to change the technical or strategic designs in software industry today. We have a long way to get there.

Yes largely, Software industry is still the middle-class person who doesn't know/want the services of an Architect.

Suresh JV.
Usability can be defined/built for a system (and can be self contained where the user is virtualized), while experience includes (metadata of) one more system that uses it. The latter involves two systems and hence cannot exist without either. So literally what Dinesh says (experience begins where usability ends) is right. But not quite.

Because the best design of system is when we design the system in the next larger context. (Who said that? Mies Van De Rohe?) Chair is designed with the room as the context, room designed with the house as the context, house with nature, so on and so forth.

What Dinesh says doesn't envelope this bigger context. You cannot separate the chair and the room.
Sinoj Mullangath
While I kind of agree with some of the concepts presented, in my humble opinion, it is next to impossible to demarcate the thin line that separates one design discipline from another. This simplistic view of the design process assumes only two disciplines, namely usability engineering and experience design. If you add to it the whole gamut of other disciples (which have different functional descriptions) like product definition, user research, interaction design and visual design, it becomes all the more difficult to define the line.
 
No real world design process works without overlaps, and which is exactly why it is difficult to find good designers (notice I do not use the words experience designer or visual designer.) A designer does not exist in isolation of the various disciples that he needs to interact with. If we work in our individual silos (e.g. I can't do that as a UX designer that is part of the usabilty engineer's job) without providing or getting inputs from related fields (including the technical team) there will be no innovation. In this respect this presentation by Bill Buxton is quite relevant (though not in context of the thread):
Navneet Nair