The following image illustrates four contrasting design approaches to furniture design. Each of the four designs reflects a distinctive aesthetic approach and intended to generate a very different experience.

• Approach A: This is a sample of a design philosophy and style known as Scandinavian Design. It embodies the ideas of minimalism, expressed in clean lines, smooth surfaces, and the composition of shapes, originally inspired by Nordic settings. It values natural materials and high-quality production. Simplicity and functionality are the promise of timeless experience, afforded by comfort and quality. Similar approaches were taken without any relationship to Scandinavia, in Japan, China, Africa, and America.
• Approach B: This design takes its cues from aristocratic high style. Known as Retro Design. This is a philosophy that aims to associate historical symbols of high-class with quality and aesthetics. In this case, the armchair echoes furniture used in the royal courts of Europe. As opposed to the classless Scandinavian Design, Retro Design is often meant to invoke an experience of a high class.
• Approach C: This colorful, imaginative, and fun design represents an approach to Experience Design that yields a unique product. The chair is attention-grabbing and it promises to provide a comfortable seating experience. It will certainly not blend into a room, and that is fine.
• Approach D: This design represents a true out-of-the-box design approach; the product is abstract. It takes a few seconds to digest the form and realize this arrangement of cylinders could actually serve as a reclining armchair.

Another class of Experience Design extends to various types of technology devices and gadgets. "A technical product is only perfect when it's aesthetically perfect too." This is the design philosophy of Ettore Bugatti, the founder, designer, and manufacturer of the venerable Bugatti brand.

Today, most products are technical products, and approaches to experience aesthetics vary greatly, as illustrated in the design of an input device affectionately known as the "mouse."

The mouse had an important role in the personal computer revolution of the 1980s. It enabled the user to perform direct manipulation of objects on the screen, an interaction pattern known as "point-and-click." It represented a major departure from the command-line interface of prior generations of personal computers.

• Approach A: This represents Apple's philosophy of simplicity and elegance. When this model, the Apple Magic Mouse, was released in 2009, its visual and tactile experience made it stand out--no buttons. The quality of the materials and the underlying technology allows it to function as a regular mouse despite having only a single button, and its entire top surface hints at the sophisticated technology underneath that supports it. The simplicity of user experience often means that the heavy lifting has to be performed by the system.
• Approach B: This represents the ergonomic Experience Design approach to technology. The guiding principle of this approach is that the healthiest and therefore the best user experience comes from designs based on deep understanding of human anatomy and physiology. In this approach, the device's shape and operation match the body's structure, functions and constraints. Repetitive Strain Syndrome has become a serious problem for people and employers. The problem was been attributed in part to product designs that were ignorant or dismissive of the human body. This generated the demand for ergonomic design.
• Approach C: This is a "cutesy" fun design approach that transforms the device from a purely functional object to one that is designed to evoke warm emotional feelings; shaped as a cute pet toy, its non-technical appearance stands in contrast to the seriousness of computers.
• Approach D: The design of this souped-up, feature-rich device communicates its technical abilities with an angular, streamlined shape and evokes the futuristic, science-fiction imagery of a space craft or weapon. The use of the glowing blue light when the mouse turned on, serves both functional and design functions.

Design has an important role in preserving a culture through the careful design evolution of its artifacts and products. The following image shows two instances of the same product, a newspaper--in this example, the New York Times; image A is the printed edition of the paper, and image B is the digital edition, as viewed on the monitor of a desktop computer:

The visual design of both instances is very similar, and it is easy to see that the objective of the digital experience has been to maintain continuity with the look of the printed paper, as manifested in the use of a multi-columns grid, and the sparse use of color, which is primarily reserved for ads and photographs.

Why might this design approach be important? For a publication such as the Times, which has had been continuously published since September 18, 1851, the look of the paper goes beyond tradition. The message that the experience delivers to its readers, and to the public in general, is a promise to preserve the same journalistic standards and values that had made this particular newspaper one of the most influential news publications in the world.

The following image compares the design of the New York Times (A) to that of another the well-regarded newspaper--The Guardian (B). The Guardian has been published in the United Kingdom since 1821, although until 1959 it was called the Manchester Guardian. The digital edition of the paper looks very different from that of the Times. Its layout and use of color--very much in-line with general approach to web aesthetics--signals continuity through adaptation to changing times.

The same set of design principles drive these two very different outcomes to what is essentially are very similar products-- Under the "skin" of a traditional or contemporary look is a relentless drive to apply the most advanced tools, methodologies, and technologies to develop and deliver a design system that best fits the product, target audience, and individual users.

We can find an interesting equivalent to approaching tradition and contemporary in the design of two familiar websites. The following shows the landing pages of Amazon (A) and Craigslist (B). As of March 2017, Amazon was ranked fourth in the United States, with close to 75 million daily users, whereas Craigslist ranked seventh, with nearly 22 million daily visitors. These are staggering numbers, and with so many repeat visitors, something about the experience of both sites must be right, despite a very different experience at each destination. As the saying goes: you can't argue with success.

The Amazon experience for desktop computer customers has evolved gradually--some would argue, very gradually, since 1995. Obviously, with hundreds of millions of annual visitors, any dramatic changes to the experience risk causing significant financial damage, if users are disoriented by, or are not happy with, the change.

Amazon has advanced its website design, constantly tweaking the visual and interaction sophistication of the website's header, navigation systems, and page layout to accommodate an ever growing number of departments and products. Craigslist's website, which started in 1996 at about the time Amazon did, stuck with its original text-based, hyperlink-heavy design.

Although this experience may appear very outdated in today's hyper visual age, given that the site still maintains such a large number of visitors, there is no doubt that this experience works.

Like Amazon, Craigslist is an example of a company that understands its target audiences, and its website design is meant to provide visitors with an optimal experience. The text interface has several benefits--it is straightforward and easy to understand, text lends itself to fast and efficient visual scanning--important for a classified ad business--page downloads are fast and do not consume much bandwidth, it works on any device with Web-browsing, and finally, the development and maintenance costs of a text-based interface are relatively low.

The preceding image illustrates competing design approaches to transform traditional products through technology. Each of the approaches represents a step in the evolution, revolution, and paradoxically, the eventual extinction of experience.

In contrast to earlier generations of designers, contemporary designers have a wider range of design directions to follow or invent because of the endless opportunities afforded by technology. However, to what extent should technological advances drive the nature of experience?

Can the design of established product categories depart from experience conventions that have been established over decades and sometimes centuries of use? The three watches shown in the preceding image reflect design philosophies and approach to this question.

• Approach A: The Apple watch is at once an attempt to revolutionize the category of wrist watches, while attempting to maintain continuity with a design system for the company's existing product line. The product can be configured to look very much like a traditional timepiece, but the face can be customized to any number of unique and very untraditional looks. However, beyond just showing the time, the watch experiences through many other functionalities in apps. This is similar to Apple's approach to the mobile phone, but while the look and feel of the iPhone were revolutionary at the time it was introduced, the watch--coming nearly a decade later--is only an evolutionary step.
• Approach B: Withings' approach to smartwatches is very different from Apple's in that the watch' time-keeping hardware makes the product look very much like a traditional timepiece, but its underlying technology provides the user with advanced capabilities. Most significantly, and in contrast to traditional watches, one sets the time of a Withings watch through an app on the user's phone, and not by a mechanical apparatus inside the case. The experience is a blend of modern and traditional.
• Approach C: The EmoPulse design might look quite futuristic to contemporary customers due to its wide but thin rounded sheet of molded plastic and glass, which brings to mind an ornamental bracelet that might be seen in a Star Trek episode. It does not look at all like a typical wrist watch. The Apple watch seem bulkier and heavier in comparison, the EmoPulse design promises an experience that attracts attention.

Design questions that come to mind when thinking about these watches are as follows:

• To what extent should designers be carried away by design possibilities that are afforded by new technology? In other words, just because we can, does it mean we should?
• To what degree should designers support a reactionary desire to preserve the product's experience and history, regardless of technological possibilities that make some of the past irrelevant--for example, designing the most amazing experience for a horse-drawn carriage just when Ford began manufacturing the less sumptuous, but revolutionary Model T.