Experience design means different things to different people, and a profusion of acronyms and passionate opinions regarding their exact scope and meaning further complicates things: CX, HCI, IA, IXA, PD, SD, UCD, UEA, UI, UX, UXA, VD and XD, to name a few. Additionally, changes in the industry are so rapid, that even during the year in which this book has been written, new experience trends have emerged, existing one solidified, and others faded out. Striving to capture an enduring snapshot of experience design, the following themes are revisited throughout the book:
- Scope: Experience design is not limited to websites, apps, or mobile devices. Rather, it is an attempt to consider the entire spectrum of manufactured experiences, from architecture to products and services.
- Historical perspective: "Innovation" seems to be applied indiscriminately and trivially these days. This diminishes the value of true achievements. We explore experience design as a point in a continuum going back thousands of years, providing context and linkage.
- Diversity: Many established disciplines originating in academia, business, design, and technology, contribute to what is still an evolving approach to the creation of product experience.
- Art versus design: Art for art's sake is beyond the scope of this book primarily because the underlying motivations, approaches, and techniques in art as such are usually different from those found in the experience design disciplines.
- Privacy: For the first time in history, intimate behavioral, physiological, and social details about hundreds of millions of individuals are captured continuously and in great detail by numerous corporations: what we eat, our sleep patterns, exercise routines and associated vitals, multitude of our personal preferences, who we talk to, what we say, and much more.
- Inter-connected world: Billions of devices that make up the "Internet of Things" are connected to the network, tracking vehicles, homes, devices, conditions on Earth and in pace, as well as individuals.
- Data science: Data is a raw natural resource. Processing it makes new services and products possible, such as analysis of past events and predictions of future trends. Insights from matching data patterns reveal potential affinity clusters, which connect individuals to other people, companies or organizations.
- Artificial intelligence: Great advances in artificial intelligence are impacting human decision support processes and infusing predictive guidance based on statistical probabilities derived from vast data collections.
- Taking over: Product designers use technology, data and design to drive the simplest, easiest interaction paths for users, reducing the need for learning and decision making. increasingly, humans are being replaced altogether by products that perform autonomously--from vacuum cleaners to cars and airplanes.
The recognition that experience design is an emerging discipline calls for embracing its fast evolving nature. While no one knows the full potential of XD domain, science fiction and dystopian visions provide a wide range of scenarios from hopeful to dire.
And yet every day, experience design work is being done. Multi-disciplinary teams are assembled, strategies are set, research conducted, requirements gathered, concepts developed and tested, and products released to market. While shaping our world and being shaped by it, time-tested methods and tools are being used, while new ones are introduced to meet changing needs. A journey through the experience design process is presented in the next chapter.