Most traditional design domains emerged as masterful hand-crafting of a singular product experience for one patron. They transitioned to pattern-based mass production during the industrial age. Today we are witnessing a return to singularly produced fully customizable experiences. However, these are not hand-made, but rather driven by manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, which make it possible to design, produce, and deliver an experience-of-one to millions of people.

Experience design is rooted deeply in personal biases and social norms. In some cultures, tradition and uniformity are valued, and in others, individualism and change are valued. In all cultures, design is influenced by cross-cultural pollination. The influences may spread quickly or take effect slowly, yin any case, it is safe to say that new design ideas do not eliminate traditional design. Instead, designers fold the new into the wider vocabulary of patterns and techniques from which they draw inspiration when conceiving new projects. 

Design is expensive. This book follows the journey that companies undertake toward fusing their products with compelling and engaging experiences. Once their investment in design has been made, companies seek to benefit from it for as long as possible before reinvestment is necessary. This means that, while changes to the product are certain and frequent, the design needs to scale, adjust, and adapt to these changes while preserving all the properties that made it a success. This is a major design challenge.

The following are some of the questions experience designers are confronted with:

• Which elements of design are constant, and which must keep evolving?
• How to preserve the DNA of a successful design?
• How to document design?
• How to govern design in order to preserve its consistency and principles, and yet evolve the design in response to change?

Like the seasons, design trends appear to be replaced and then reappear. In the process, designers contribute evolutionary refinement and optimization to known experiences, or they revolutionize the space with a completely new approach.

However, how can companies do this and still be profitable, given that there is often strong competition in each product segment? How can design scale in a way that targets tens of millions of people, and yet meets the unique desires and preferences of a single individual?