Experience Design: Technology for All the Right Reasons

by Marc Hassenzahl

beautification. Instead, it explores what really matters to humans and what it needs to make technology more meaningful.

The book clarifies what experience is, and highlights five crucial aspects and their implications for the design of interactive products. It provides reasons why we should bother with an experiential approach, and presents a detailed working model

1.3 Experience from a Design Perspective

Crucial Properties of Experience

2.4 Dynamic (Versus Static)

of the Chapter

4.2 Categories of Needs Equals Categories of Experiences 4.3 From Needs to Products

4.5 Do Needs Have Different Priorities? 4.6 A Brief Note on Evaluation

5.2 Normative Powers of

5.5 Theory-Inspired Design 5.6 The Essence

a glimpse on mine. I am indebted to all friends, colleagues, students and my family (Do not expect name-dropping

The Kolonel Begaultlaan in Leuven, Belgium, is a straight, dull road, running parallel to a canal. Just across is Stella Artois—a huge industrial complex, where one of the most internationally successful lagers is brewed. Number 15, Kolonel Begaultlaan, is a building

black. Large candles show the way. Behind a wooden door at the end of the passage is Luzine, the restaurant of Joeren Meus, a Belgian cook with his own TV show—some

the Boudoir style: luscious, decadent, grey, black, gold, and subdued lights. On the occasion I went

was marvelous, my company was splendid, and the whole evening was a true success. However, what especially struck me and what I kept in mind, w...

Luzine was an experience. It was an episode, a chunk o...

stream of feelings and thoughts we have while being conscious—a continuous commentary on the current state of affairs. Forlizzi and Battarbee (2004, p. 263) describe it as a “constant stream of self-talk” and are careful

professional kitchen set to prepare the delicious food; telephones to make the reservations and to order the chicken,

itself, mobile phone or ring, is only interesting because it mediates a personally

In other words, the actual product has no value beyond the experiences it allowed for became

and do, it has the power to create particular experiences. With the ring, embedded in the agreed upon ritual, the lovers have no chance to surprise each other. Their bond is rather the consequence of a moment in time, dedicated

other, and the very idea of being “in sync.” In con...

worthwhile, from a recipient’s, consumer’s, or user’s perspective, experience remains experience, no matter whether mediated by an object, a service, or other people. The experience approach to designing interactive

should bother with an experiential approach to interactive products. Chapter 4 presents a high-level model of experience and Chapter 5 takes a specific design perspective. 1.1 A FIRST GLANCE ON EXPERIENCE

In a seminal paper on emotions, James Russell (2003) advances the idea that emotional experience is the consequence of self-perception and categorization, a construction

negatively aroused and running away from a bear, you may—unconsciously—integrate all this...

with general knowledge.”

is beyond question that emotion is at the centre of experience. The most compelling argument for this is the observation that emotion, cognition, motivation, and action are inextricably intertwined. Antonio Damasio (1994) made a persuasive case by exposing the consequences of physical severances, through accidents

integrates physiological processes (e.g., arousal), affective evaluation (e.g., valence), cognitive processes (e.g., attribution), and behavior (e.g., flight).

of experiences to their common core. And they eschew attempts to understand experience as reducible to, predictable or explainable by their underlying processes

not emerge from thin air. They are attempts to makes sense of ourselves, our bodily reactions, our behavior, other people’s behavior and so forth. It is just a matter of complexity, the sheer amount of single

1632-1675, Girl with a pearl earring, c. 1665, Canvas, 44,5 x 39 cm, The Hague, Mauritshuis.

Especially, the sense of intimacy

housing the picture, explains: “[…] important […] are Vermeer’s fresh colors, virtuoso technique and subtle rendering of light effects. The turban is enlivened, for example, with the small highlights that

relate in any way to Vermeer and his paintings. Similarly, others may not have been as surprised by Luzine as me. Experience emerges from a variety of aspects,

However, to design an experience should not be rendered as futile.

all the rationalization measures introduced to reduce

1.5 ESSENCE OFTHE CHAPTER An experience is an episode,

by applying some of the already available knowledge about experience (in part, presented within this

measures of the same phenomenon, we find negligible correlations [between them]” (p. 625). Whether participants were

number was used as anchor, and the actual estimate was only insufficiently adjusted.

estimates as given above invites the critique of being “unexperien-tial,”

such as Norm Theory (Kahneman and Miller, 2002), are able to shed light on some very common, pervasive and emotional experiences—better: “experience

like Eleanor Catton idea about a book.

that the plane left on schedule. You missed it; another night at an anonymous hotel and a lost Saturday lies ahead.

This mechanism explains a number of puzzling findings. In an analysis