Marc Hassenzahl is a professor at the Folkwang University in Germany.
Marc is doing research in the positive, affective and motivational aspects of user experience and experience design.
Okay, Marc, so designers who want to apply the principles of experience design when designing products,
can you give them some advice? What are your main guidelines? - Yeah. Okay.
Unfortunately, there aren't ready-made guidelines; I can't provide "the 10 points" and then you do it. - Of course.
- And then you have experiential products. -That's it, yeah. - That won't work.
But there are some things which I find very important.
John McCarthy and Peter Wright use designing as a dialogue.
So, you have a user with a value center;
they want something in their life. And you have a designer with a value center,
and this designer wants to give something.
And they are in a dialogue, and they have to kind of negotiate what the final product will be.
So, it's not the one-way road where the designer just tries to figure out what this person wants,
being disinterested or uninterested in that sense, yeah, but he brings something to the table
and he should make sure that, the designer has the principles and his ideas of what he wants to provide in that sense.
For designers, normally it's quite common, but in interactive products design because we're brought up
with this user-centered design idea, sometimes the designer tends to disappear a bit
because we have that idea that we have everything to get from the user and we have to be "objective" anyway.
So, that's the first thing – you have to get that back. You know – you're a designer
and you're human and you have the right to propose something.
But you have to figure out how this suggestion is taken up and what will happen if you put it in and so on.
So, that's the first thing. The second thing is I'm using a very simple model to guide my work – you know.
And it has just three levels – the why, the what and the how.
So, the what is actually what people can do with it. So, the what is, for example, making a telephone call;
the core functionality of a thing. And the *how* is the way you then interact with it.
So, if the iPhone has high aesthetics of interaction, it's more about how you interact with that.
There are hundreds of ways of making a telephone call, and this is just one that's nicely designed, aesthetically pleasing.
And this is what you normally have in products – these two steps. But what I consider very important for the
experience is the *why* – why are we doing this? Why are we interacting?
And this, the needs people have and the emotions around them, this colors the whole experience.
So, the whole trick is – there are two tricks; the one thing is to design this before that.
So, to think about the needs you address. - The why before the what and the how. - The emotions you want to have before you do that.
And there are some examples in game design. There's a saying that game designers tend to always design games in the same genre.
So, you're good in racing games, you're doing racing games – more tracks, more cars, more weather
– stuff like that, but you never start to rethink the type of game.
And there are other games, like independent games you could have where people just start from emotions they want to create
and then figure out what kind of genre fits or something like that – this would be an experiential
or an experience-oriented design process for me, so get that straight. - The why.
- The why, and then think of a way to transport this to the user.
And then the second thing is that this has to be *aligned* with this.
So, if you're designing for relatedness, closeness between people – you know, that something is emotional,
you should find a way of interaction that kind of reflects upon that.
If you design for competence, maybe for situations where you want to be in control and that's the fun of it,
you need a completely different type of interaction. So, there's no interaction that is good or bad in itself.
But it's all a matter of how this fits the actual experience you want to have.
So, now I'm talking – you know – if you're talking about needs and that's very abstract, but there's a level in between.
So, you're putting in a story and you try to tell that story through an object.
And that means to kind of dare to script the interaction of the user with the
product more tightly than it is normally done. I think we now have this philosophy of
we toss out a technology and people just try to figure out how they use it, and they use it in very different ways, like a telephone.
You can take the telephone if you want to feel related to somebody;
you just – you know – put it on the bed and leave it on, and then you can
listen to the other person's sleeping noises or so. But that's not for what the telephone is made.
You have to make it up; so, that's the normal way. And I think as an experience designer
you should think more about the actual experience you want to deliver and design it more carefully
and then think about the way of making that
materialize, I would say, materialize and contextualize it.
There are some interesting things in experience. I mean one thing is like
it's subjective. I learned that "subjective" is not a very
appropriate word because it might have a negative connotation to it.
In German, it's not that fact; it just means that it's somehow internal – it's a personal thing.
And if I want to design for an experience, I have somehow to meddle with you – you know.
I have to ask you about stories, and I have to accept that you are the one that has the experience
and that I try to give it to you and that it doesn't matter how much – how objectively the situation, how it is objectively;
it matters what you *make from it*, so that's a very important thing.
And the thing is in usability it's a bit different. In usability, you had always that (inaudible) "opinion" and objective stuff.
And this just points you at the fact that maybe the opinion is a little bit more important than what
actually happened in that three seconds we are conscious while we interact with the product.
And another thing I find very important is this *idea of dynamic*.
We're talking about interactive products as if they are static. You know –
you have an iPhone, and then now rate how good the iPhone is on a scale from 1 to 10.
But actually, it's made up of a lot of different experiences, and each experience
has a drama and has a time scale. And I think that's important for interaction designers because they
need to take a look at scriptwriters,
at people that know how to design with time-dependent media, like film, cutting, all that stuff.
I mean, you can see it in interaction design, but it's not so systematic at the moment, although it's clearly a time-dependent thing.
If you're doing experience design, you're writing scripts and writing stories,
and this is a completely different set of skills than we would normally have as a psychologist doing user experience and so on.
- So, you actually put the designer in there more or less as an author who takes a lot of responsibility
to the task of designing. - Yeah. - More than if you would say it was more "objective"
and you would just design a product which the consumer were to find out how it was functioning. - Yeah.
- So, there are a lot of ethics and values coming in to— - Yeah.
OK, I think the best would be to give you an example of what I actually mean
because I think it's not so clear what I mean with telling a story through a product
if you don't have an example; then we can talk also about the ethics with this example.
It's a diploma thesis of one of my students – Swantje Krauss – and what she did is
she designed a bucket for picking grapes. - Yeah.
- And this bucket here is very ergonomically, it fits perfectly in the vineyard.
It has everything you need for comfortable carrying and stuff like that.
But you put something in – namely, you can change this bucket into a seat.
And you can see that in these pictures; so, this is where you pick the grapes.
And this is where you have this rest. - Yeah. - And she was talking with people working in this, and it's very hard work.
And it takes six weeks or so, too, for the whole picking.
And what people really enjoy about it is being in nature, being in contact with the grapes,
being in the vineyard, and the social aspects – talking with each other.
So, this is actually what they enjoy; it's not picking the grapes – it's these other things.
And by putting it into the product, by making it possible that you can change this bucket
into a seat, you kind of tell these people it's *OK to take a break*.
That's the first thing, and *take it in the vineyard*. You can use it; no, you don't have to go somewhere where you can sit properly;
you can do it right here and sit together and have this break.
And there's a lot of other interesting stuff in it because you have to turn it around.
That means it has to be empty, and this also indicates the perfect time for a break.
You did some work. - When you've filled it up. - You did some work and filled it up; you emptied it in the main bucket; now it's empty.
You know – now the message is: "Now you can have a break."
So, there's a whole story in it told through a product.
And I think it makes it much, much more easy to have that break
and the break feels more accepted than it would normally be in a work context.
- Environment. - In a work environment. - So, this is very sympathic... - Yeah.
- But I guess it could obviously be used for other reasons to make people work harder. - Yeah.
- So, there's a lot of manipulation in it as well.
- Yeah, exactly. - In good ways and in bad ways. - That's what I meant with design as a value center.
So, you want to tell that story. It doesn't come from somebody who's manufacturing these buckets.
It's not coming from the owner of the vineyard. It's coming from the designer
who has this urge or this need to make it a little bit better,
knows something about it and tries to tell a better story of work so to say.
And I think this, you need – the key word is *responsibility*.
So, if you do something like that, you have to think about what you're putting out,
and how people will incorporate this stuff in it— - And "What are the values behind it?" - Yeah, "What are your values behind?"
- So, if you would argue that no, you can use this kind of idea
to create all kinds of situations which are also not enjoyable for the people, that's true
because it's powerful telling stories through objects. You could also design a bucket that tells the story
– you know – a break is not acceptable at all; don't do it.
And that's where the responsibility of the designer kicks in.
So, at a certain place, you have to sit there and you have to make your mind up whether you want to design that.
So, you can't step back and say – you know – "I'm just doing the shell." - Yeah.
Or "I'm just doing the interaction design. I mean, it's a machine gun, but... no,
I want to have it look – it should be martial and like really dangerous-looking and so on
because I did a mood map and I found out that in war it should look like that."
I mean, you can't do that. You have to make your mind up whether you *want* to design this
and whether you want to be held accountable for that.
And I think that's a basic problem – not a basic problem but a challenge in experience design
because I think in design at the moment it's: people just reduced it
to their little tiny kingdom, and they just do that and they don't have to care about the rest
– which means they never do really wrong; they never have to really face any ethic questions.
So, actually it doesn't matter – you know – whether you operate your iPhone like that. - Yeah.
Or – I mean. It's just a matter of aesthetics but not a matter of changing anybody.
But if you go to experience design the way I would envision it, you will always be confronted with these choices.
And that means that we need designers to take up this responsibility and have a clear idea of what they want to do.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that they have to – that we all have to share the same values,
but we have to talk about it. - Yeah, and be aware. - Be aware of it; not just putting something out
and leave it to the people what would happen out there.
- So, are there any more things that we should be aware of? Are there any things we *shouldn't do* when we're designing products?
Any no-nos? - OK, I mean there's this transition
from experience as just an idea of how we should design and this idea of the post-materialistic society;
and this is somehow not so clear-cut.
So, I personally, for example, think that we should design for less consumerism;
(inaudible) less speed; more making instead of consuming,
which will lead to more reflection and a more conscious engagement with the world, I would say.
- Thank you so much, Marc, for passing on your advice and your guidelines and perspectives.
And if you want to know more, you can have a look at the chapter Marc has written at interaction-design.org.
And at our site, you can also find more chapters written by other thought leaders and inventors.
And you could also find more videos like this one.