Discussion: You’ve heard of product design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, etc, but perhaps not Experience Design, which is the invisible frontier of human engagement. UX (“User Experience”) design has been around for a long time to understand how humans can best engage with onscreen potentials, but mobile experience design is considerably deeper and more exciting. As mobile technologies continue to get smaller and more capable, they are beginning to disappear from our physical awareness without letting go of our attention – in fact, they are cleverly meshing our physical and digital worlds into an enhanced form of attention. This is possible because mobile media can be context aware: they are our first media to be about us – where we are, who we’re with, etc, etc.
523 Inspiration: Experience Design is what mobile technologies were born to enable. All of our other media have only been able to delivery monolithic linear narratives. The opportunity to author open, social, synchronous, real-world narratives that weave the web into everyday life is unliteral & unnatural for us. Welcome to the new natural, if you’re bold enough to author it. The opportunities for learning are breathtaking. So Experience Design is not about optimizing the usability of a device or an application, it is about optimizing the usefulness of the real world around you. You might think of it as the programming language for an AI that will eventually be your very personal agent as you go about your daily existence: how can you seamlessly integrate ambient contexts and affordances of location, time, season, the people you’re with, the things you enjoy, the things you are most interested in, your immediate objectives, your health, etc, into an augmented ongoing experience of life? All of this is possible, and inevitable, through the magic of that device in your hand, so how do we make it happen?
As an educator who teaches courses on UX/UI and on Branding and Information Design this topic is of particular interest. Experience Design has a broad and significant role in our daily lives. Experience design is a topic at a branding level for companies and services and it shapes how we experience (positive & negative) the built environment and its content. What is interesting about Experience Design in the context of this course is that it is largely medium agnostic. It is also unique in that it extends to all of our senses — many of which technology hasn’t had the ability to emulate or affect. Finally, as humans, as much as we are enamoured by shiny objects, we tend to put a higher value on experiences and connections. When we can support/augment these experiences in a positive way with Experience Design then we have the opportunity as designers to positively impact the human experience.
I’m particularly excited by experience design because it addresses the limitations of traditional, linear learning, which often fails to engage most learners by offering only one entry point and one exit point. Experience design shifts the focus toward personalized, immersive, and contextual learning, allowing learners to actively do rather than just think. My own experience as a musician, where I honed skills through iteration, networking, and self-directed practice, has shown me how powerful non-linear, experiential learning can be. This frontier supports learners with complex, non-sequential structures that more closely mirror real-world challenges, making learning natural, motivating, and relevant. Professionally, I see the potential to leverage mobile and digital tools to craft these rich, adaptive experiences that meet learners where they are. I am drawn to Experience Design both because it represents an inevitable shift in education and because I am personally inspired by the possibilities it opens for innovation and for making learning more meaningful and impactful.