Lesson03

User Experience and Experience Design

- Understanding user
- Informing design: from theory to practice
- Experience and business
- The evasive beast called user experience
- experience design: Designing The post-materialistic
- Why, What and How
- Conclusion and future directions
- 'What is the purpose of journey mapping?
- What is a journey map in design thinking?

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 2
1. Understanding user
will start this chapter with a discussion of our Western
societies' shift from the material to the experiential and
the potential problems technology-oriented businesses
have in accommodating this shift. User
Experience and Experience Design can be a remedy to
this by bringing experience to the fore. I then
discuss Experience and User Experience to flesh out a
view which has the potential to advance the way we will
design future technologies. I end with some examples
of Experience Design and finally offer a simple model
of Why, What and How as a starting point for the
enthusiastic Experience Designer
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 3
2. Informing design: from theory to practice
In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, young
Charlie faces a tough choice. He just found the
last Golden Ticket in a bar of Whipple-Scrumptious
Fudgemallow Delight. (Figure 2). It is one of only five
invitations to visit Willy Wonka's legendary chocolate
factory. Charlie is promised a day full of "mystic and
marvellous surprises that will entrance, delight, intrigue,
astonish, and perplex beyond measure. In your wildest
dreams you could not imagine that such things happen to
you!"

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 4
But Charlie is poor. It is a freezing winter and the whole family of seven
is living on not more than cabbagy meals and the occasional boiled
potato. People already offered as much as $500 for the ticket. Wouldn't
it be more sensible to forfeit Wonka's frivolous offer and to secure the
money? In the end, Charlie took the ticket and was awarded with the
most extraordinary experience of his life.
Charlie chose the experience over the material. He could have had a
winter coat or fire wood instead of the experience, but he already knew
that only the visit to the chocolate factory has the power to add some
meaning to his life. In fact, studies show that experiential purchases
(i.e., the acquisition of an event to live through, such as a concert, a
dinner, a journey) make people more happy than material purchases
(i.e., the acquisition of tangible objects, such as clothing, jewellery,
stereo equipment) of the same value (Boven and Gilovich 2003; Carter
and Gilovich 2010)
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 5
In a series of studies, Leaf van Boven and colleagues (2010) further
uncovered stigmatizing stereotypes: Participants characterized
people with a material orientation as self-centred, insecure, or
judgmental, but people with an experiential orientation as
humorous, friendly, open-minded, intelligent, caring, or outgoing.
The seemingly negative stance towards the materialistic is an
indication of a post-materialistic culture. Ronald Inglehart (1997)
argued that societies in sustained periods of material wealth
become increasingly interested in values such as personal
improvement. They transform into highly individual Experience
Societies (Schulze 1992; Schulze 2005) whose members equate
happiness with the acquisition of positive life events. Decried as
superficial and consumerist in the 80ties and 90ties of the last
century, we now witness a version of the Experience Society which
favours meaningful engagement to earning money and begins
http://fpt.edu.vn to
12/01/24 6
Experiences are no longer supposed to be available at exotic places only.
They can be close by: a day out in the sun, working the garden, a
barbecue with friends, or a trip to the local flea market. In the foreword to
the 2005 edition of his book, Gerhard Schulze (2005, p IX) mentions some
signifiers of the new millennium's Experience Society: deceleration instead
of acceleration, less instead of more, uniqueness instead of
standardisation, concentration instead of diversion, and making instead of
consuming. All these are not necessarily associated with material wealth.
Admittedly, to develop a post-materialistic (i.e., experiential) orientation
may require sufficient food, clothing, and shelter (Inglehart 1997; Maslow
1954). This is the gist of Charlie Bucket's dilemma: choosing a frivolous
one-day experience in a chocolate factory over supporting his family with
food and clothing seems almost immoral. However, while I agree that an
experiential orientation in life requires some food, clothes and shelter as a
necessary precondition (Inglehart 1997), I do not believe that it needs
caviar, Gucci, and a chateau in the hills of the Cote d'Azur. Most of us in
the developed countries have the basis for leading a post-materialistic
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24life 7
3. Experience and business
•Though the transformation to a post-materialistic experience
society has been recognized by business, as indicated by books
such as The Experience Economy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999)
or Experiential Marketing (Schmitt 1999), it still struggles with
making sense of it. A good example is the music industry. While
the number of concerts is still rising, record sales dropped
considerably from 2000 and onwards. For example,
Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor sold only 1.6 million
copies, but her world tour generated about 200 million dollars.
According to Pollstar (Bongiovann 2010), in 2009 the average
ticket price for a top 100 act in the US was about $64, a CD
made only $13.99. Typically, illegal digital downloads are made
responsible for this effect.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 8
But the missing willingness to pay for music in the form of a tangible
product may also be a consequence of shifting from a materialistic to
an experiential orientation. Today the music itself matters, not
ownership, argues Arthur Schock (2010), a booker for independent
electronic artists, in a recent interview for Spiegel-Online. He reported
on record release parties with 800 raving guests but only ten records
sold afterwards. "Liking bears no relation to buying the CD," he
concluded. On Creative Deconstruction Rich Huxley (2010) mused: "If
we can all now make, distribute and sell music, to succeed we've got
to differentiate ourselves from the crowd and give people something
they can't get elsewhere. If we can give people something that isn't
repeatable and isn't copyable then all the better. So, what's unique
and not copyable? A feeling, or an experience." Instead of
complaining about declining CD sales, the music industry must
develop new, more experiential formats.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 9
Why aren't they? One of the main reasons why the music
industry dislikes the shift away from the material is the
limited scalability of experience. Once produced, a CD
can be copied and sold in theoretically infinite quantities,
while an artist can only play a limited number of concerts
a year, with a limited number of paying attendants. As
long as most industries and their strategies are still
geared towards earning money by mass-producing and
selling tangible objects, their take on the experiential is
often not more than a feeble marketing strategy. For
example, the German Telekom recently made
"experiencing" its marketing claim ("Erleben, was
verbindet").
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 10
The companion website promises to be a place for sharing
memorable and unique experiences. But a close look reveals
hardly more than the occasional sponsored live event
interspersed with badly disguised attempts to sell standard
products and services. Experience is considered a vehicle for
marketing, but not understood as the very product that is
sold. The transition from an economy of products and
services to one of experience and transformation certainly
requires more (Pine and Gilmore 1999). This is the challenge
we face: Experience or User Experience is not about
technology, industrial design, or interfaces. It is about
creating a meaningful experience through a device.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 11
4. The evasive beast called User Experience
Experience is an almost overwhelmingly rich concept, with a long
history of debate and many attempts to "define" it (Jay 2004). I
primarily focus on experiences as meaningful, personally
encountered events (in German: "Erlebnis") and not so much on
the knowledge gained through these events (in German:
"Erfahrung"). These experiences are memorized stories of use
and consumption and distinct from the immediate moment-by-
moment experience (e.g., Forlizzi and Battarbee 2004;
Kahneman 1999). While the immediate moment-by-moment
experience is certainly interesting, memorized experience is of
more practical relevance. This is simply because most of our
waking time, we are feasting on vivid memories of the past (or
anticipations) rather than on immediate pleasures.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 12
The construction of experiences as stories from moment-
by-moment experience is not straightforward. For
example, experiences tend to improve over time. As van
Boven (2005, p. 137) puts it: "As one forgets the
incidental annoyances and distractions that detract from
the online, momentary enjoyment of an experience,
one's memory of an experience can be sharpened,
levelled, and 'spun' so that the experience seems better
in retrospect than it actually was." Who doesn't fall victim
to a "rosy view" now and then. We are spinning - not
necessarily consciously - our own experiences.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 13
5. Experience Design: Designing the post-
materialistic
With the sharp distinction between the experiential and
the material suggested by many authors (e.g., Boven and
Gilovich 2003), an "experiential interactive product"
appears like a contradiction in terms. While experience is
intangible, volatile, an interactive product is tangible, a
mass-produced piece of technology. The "electronic
gadget" is the very prototype of a material purchase. The
seasoned post-materialist, though, ceases to strive for
yet another novel communication device. She will rather
enjoy writing a letter
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 14
But even the post-materialist's experience is most of the
time mediated. Writing a letter requires a pen, paper,
and a messenger, who in turn needs a carriage, a
zeppelin, or a plane. This holds for all the typical
examples of experiential purchases provided by van
Boven (2003): travel requires transportation, dining
requires a good kitchen, and a concert requires
instruments and amplification. Things are not the
opposite of experiences, but create and substantially
shape them. The combination of a pen and a piece of
paper, and the resulting activity of writing with one's own
hand, has certain features which in turn shape the
resulting experience.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 15
It is, for example, relatively slow and, thus, offers time for
reflection, not provided by more efficient technologies
(Lindley et al 2009). Thus, the post-materialist is not
necessarily a "green luddite" (Kozinets 2007) who shuns
technology in general. But she is more interested in the
experience created than taking pride in the ownership of
the product or technology that created it. Once created,
the experience is what is owned - an immaterial,
personal story. The product is only of interest as it is
identified as being crucial in creating the experience
(Hassenzahl et al 2010).

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 16
The challenge of designing interactive products for the post-
materialist is to bring the resulting experience to the fore - to design
the experience before the product. Or as Buxton (2007, p. 127) puts
it: "Despite the technocratic and materialistic bias of our [US-
American] culture, it is ultimately experiences we are designing, not
things." But what does that mean, to design an experience? For
Buxton it seems a matter of how it feels to act through a product, in
the moment it is used - the moment-by-moment experience. He used
different orange squeezers to highlight how different usage can "feel"
even if the function remains the same. This addresses the How of
product use, the Aesthetics of Interaction. This notion of Experience -
as focusing on how something is done - was notably sparked by the
success of Apple's iPhone, featuring a so far unique aesthetic of
interaction, but basically fulfilling the same tasks as any other mobile
phone.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 17
6. Why, What and How
The notion of (User) Experience as stories told through products has a
potential to change the way we think and design. At the moment, the
majority of commercially available interactive devices is either too
practical or too open-ended. The practical view results in very obvious
and uninspiring stories: how exciting is keeping a calendar on a mobile
phone? The open-ended view on the other hand just provides
functionality, such as texting, and leaves it to the user to come up with
meaningful and inspiring usage scenarios, such as sending "love
messages." In this case, the creation of meaningful experiences through
appropriating a technology remains the responsibility of the "user". In
contrast, Experience Design stands for technology, which suggests
meaningful, engaging, valuable, and aesthetically pleasing experiences
in itself. Thinking "communication experiences" rather than "mobile
devices" opens up a huge design space for possible devices - even
slippers (Chen et al 2006) or pillows (Laschke et al 2010).
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 18
Don't get me wrong, we still need all the wonderful technologies, dreamt up
by engineers and computer scientists all over the world. But they are only
materials - canvas, colours, and brushes - for the Experience Designer. From a
business perspective, shifting attention from technological to experiential
advancement makes sense, as long as the invention of new technologies and
their marketing becomes increasingly difficult. Just take 3D television as an
example: It is an innovation born out of a frantic need for re-inventing
television to ensure future sales. The result is an expensive, hard to sell
technology, without much power to impact our lives "The new movie by
Darren Aronofsky now in 3D! So what?" Indeed, other technology-mediated
innovations, such as improving the social experience of watching television as
a family or over a distance, require less effort in terms of resources (both on
the vendor and the consumer end), but at the same time offer a profound
improvement of current practices and according experiences. We should
definitely shift attention (and resources) from the development of new
technologies to the conscious design of resulting experiences, from
technology-driven innovations to human-driven innovations.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 19
7. Conclusion and future directions
The notion of (User) Experience as stories told through products has a
potential to change the way we think and design. At the moment, the
majority of commercially available interactive devices is either too
practical or too open-ended. The practical view results in very obvious
and uninspiring stories: how exciting is keeping a calendar on a mobile
phone? The open-ended view on the other hand just provides
functionality, such as texting, and leaves it to the user to come up with
meaningful and inspiring usage scenarios, such as sending "love
messages." In this case, the creation of meaningful experiences through
appropriating a technology remains the responsibility of the "user". In
contrast, Experience Design stands for technology, which suggests
meaningful, engaging, valuable, and aesthetically pleasing experiences
in itself. Thinking "communication experiences" rather than "mobile
devices" opens up a huge design space for possible devices - even
slippers (Chen et al 2006) or pillows (Laschke et al 2010).
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 20
7. Conclusion and future directions
Don't get me wrong, we still need all the wonderful
technologies, dreamt up by engineers and computer
scientists all over the world. But they are only materials -
canvas, colours, and brushes - for the Experience
Designer. From a business perspective, shifting attention
from technological to experiential advancement makes
sense, as long as the invention of new technologies and
their marketing becomes increasingly difficult. Just take
3D television as an example: It is an innovation born out
of a frantic need for re-inventing television to ensure
future sales.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 21
7. Conclusion and future directions
The result is an expensive, hard to sell technology,
without much power to impact our lives "The new movie
by Darren Aronofsky now in 3D! So what?" Indeed, other
technology-mediated innovations, such as improving the
social experience of watching television as a family or
over a distance, require less effort in terms of resources
(both on the vendor and the consumer end), but at the
same time offer a profound improvement of current
practices and according experiences. We should
definitely shift attention (and resources) from the
development of new technologies to the conscious
design of resulting experiences, from technology-driven
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 22
8. What is the purpose of journey mapping
•So you have heard about journey mapping but you are still not
sure why to use it in a company? We want to help you with that.
In general, customer journey maps allow you to improve your
business by better understanding your customers’ perspective.
•There are several possible reasons to start mapping your
customers’ experience:
• You want to improve the status quo
• Pain points are popping up and you want to identify and
understand the reasons
• Customer satisfaction scores or other KPIs are declining and
you want to understand the reasons for it
• You want to put the focus on customers instead of processes
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 23
• Often organizations know that something is going on by
looking at certain KPIs or by getting complaints. However, the
challenge lies in understanding the reasons for the bad KPIs or
declining scores.
• ‍This is where journey mapping comes into play: Let’s take a
scenario where your company has been experiencing a
significant drop off in the number of customers. Mapping out
your customer’s experience can help you understand the
small and big moments that influence this experience and can
help you get at the nature of the problem. It might for
example be something connected to the user interface or to
the support staff. In any case, journey mapping can help you
identify and communicate these problems. Once you have
tracked the pain points, you might be able to unveil potential
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 24
room for innovation.
Organizational benefits of journey mapping
•Customer journey maps can help you illustrate the overall
experience a customer has with a service, a physical or digital
product, or even a brand.
•A journey map can help you and your team in different ways
when it comes to improving and optimizing your customer
experience.
•The benefits of customer journey mapping at a glance:

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 25
What is a journey map in design thinking?
•Design thinking is a tool that equips stakeholders and
product teams with a deep understanding of their users
so that they can ideate, prototype, and test user-
centered solutions.
•That means the success of your team’s design
thinking sessions hinges upon a solid foundation of user
insights. Failure to know who you are solving for, what
solutions they use today (if any), and what motivates and
inhibits them means you’re operating in the dark. In
other words, you’ll be doing what the overwhelming
majority of organizations do by viewing design as an
afterthought.
http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 26
• With a customer journey map, the solutions your team
ideates, prototypes, and tests will be much more
informed—and they’ll ultimately save you from costly
redos.
• One more thing before getting started: It’s become
popular for product people and designers to want to
spend all of their energy focusing exclusively on the
user. But your company’s journey, as it relates to your
user, is vitally important to understand too. So I’ll also
highlight how you can connect customer and business
need inside your maps.

http://fpt.edu.vn 12/01/24 27