Everyone’s Saying Experience Design

Last time we saw some of your answers to: “What is experience design?” There were a lot, and they were all different. Suggesting that there isn’t a single agreed definition. Yet, anyway.

Today, let me tell you a story.

(And bear with me. I cut my notes down by 99%, but this will still be double the usual word count. This topic has been needing attention for a while. Next week we’ll be back to normal, I promise.)

1983: Service Design

Let’s start here for now. G. Lynn Shostack, a bank marketing executive, coins the term “service design,” spawning a new field. Like product design, but for services. Smart, right? She develops many tools you might use today, like process diagrams, customer journey maps, and ethnographic research.

1993: User Experience

Don Norman, a computer scientist at Apple, invents the term “user experience.” He was looking for a phrase to encompass all aspects of interacting with a computer, not just the interface. Norman has since achieved guru status.

(Certain readers may notice right about now that I am leaving out human-centered design, and IDEO’s design thinking, for space reasons. LMK if you’re desperate for more on those.)

1999: The Experience Economy

B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore popularize the term “experience economy” in an article and later book. They propose that businesses should create experiences for customers, so that memories become the product, rather than goods or services.

2002: Customer Experience Design

Soon after Pine and Gilmore’s bestseller, the Customer Experience Professionals Association is formed. Its members draw on the methods of Service Design and User Experience, fueled by the business promise of the Experience Economy, to practice Customer Experience Design (CXD).

And all that? It was just the start.

2002 — Present: Everyone’s Saying Experience Design

Today you can apply to many different university degree programs in all the biggies: Service Design, User Experience, and Customer Experience Design.

And there’s more: established professional fields of design for Digital Experience (DXD), Employee Experience (EXD), and Patient Experience (PXD).

Lastly, all the countless growing subfields bring us up to the present: there are folks designing for Airline Passenger Experience, Casino Guest Experience, Citizen Experience, Donor Experience, Employee Experience, Hotel Guest Experience, Restaurant Guest Experience, Retail Shopper Experience, Sports Fan Experience, and Workplace Experience, to name a few.

And one more, which we’ll discuss next time.

Tomorrow, our third and final episode: (Museum Exhibition Visitor) Experience Design.

Warmly,
Jonathan 

P.S. I’d love to hear from you. Hit REPLY and let me know what you thought of today’s note, and about our question: What is experience design? No wrong answers, no judging.

P.P.S. By the way, here’s yesterday’s broken link about forks.

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This week, the MtM Word of the Day is the Word of the Week. Stay tuned.