- You may think we are in Russia because of the church behind me, but we're actually in Germany, in Darmstadt.
We're here to meet Professor Marc Hassenzahl, who is a professor in user experience and experience design.
And this is what he's going to tell us more about in his home here in Darmstadt.
So, Marc, what is user experience, experience design as well as experience?
It's all related so close, but can you tell us what you think it is?
- Yeah. I think it's really difficult to take all these different things apart.
But let me start with the term "user experience" – a term I kind of dislike a bit
because of that focus on usage only and the user, and
you know – it's like as if it would be so closely rooted only in action.
But experience is a much broader field, I would say; so, I would rather like to talk about *experiences*
or *experiencing* later on and experience design as the way to create those experiences.
For me, user experience is just a field of study; so, there happen to be some people in the context of interactive products
coming out of the usability community that thought maybe we should change our models a bit
and they came up with this word.
And I think it's called "user" because usability was always very deeply rooted in usage.
And when people invented that term, you know, it hadn't been the consumer,
but naturally the user. And experience is just, shall I say, more focus on the user,
on his or her psychology, on emotions and stuff like that, so just stressing that we should even more focus on the user.
But over time, somehow people started to take that *experience* term literally
and try to explore – you know – what would it mean if we really would design for experiences,
not just take that as a term for denoting more closeness to people.
And I think that started like six or seven years ago – people started to think about
what it actually is and publications popped up.
- So, designing with this in mind, could you give examples of any products?
- Basically, I think there are not that many products out there at the moment.
I would like to distinguish two different kinds of ways of looking at experience.
One is I mean you have something like a moment-by-moment experience; so, in that moment you feel
somehow, you do something, you think... and that all that together is like this experience you have in the moment.
And this focus is very much on what we do and what we think in a particular moment
and focus is also very much on the how – so, if you use a product, on how does it feel?
You know – how to touch, how does it look, how is it in your hands: how does it fit? And stuff like that.
This is one way of looking at experience, and I think a product like the iPhone
or the iPod Touch with this new way of interacting with a multi-touch and physics
model beneath, that's more catering to this kind of experience.
I would prefer calling it the *aesthetics of interaction*; so, for me it's not really the thing I'm after.
- What are you after? - Yeah, I'm more after...
I think this window of consciousness, the moment-by-moment experience you have is just
three seconds or whatever – it's very small – and most of the time
we are working on *memories of experiences* we have and they are quite different
because the moment you experience something, you encode it somehow in your memory
and you're trying to *make sense of it to create meaning*.
You forget things. What you do is you construct a *story of usage*,
and it has a beginning and end; it has a structure, and this is what you actually remember.
This is what you will communicate to other people; this is the reality you had with the product.
And this is nothing new; I mean, that's actually how we as humans define ourselves.
We even have our own memory system for that – episodic memory – that stores these stories of our lives.
And as long as we interact with certain kinds of technology, we create those stories as well.
This is my idea of experience; so, if you put it more academically, then it's the difference between
*experiencing*, I would say, and *experience as a story, as a narrative*.
And I would like to design for these stories.
So, on one hand that would mean that we have to understand
what these stories contain, what is important in those stories;
are they all very personal? So, would we ever have the same story or can we talk about it?
Will you understand my stories and vice versa?
And how can we use the stories to put them into products?
The design part would then be retelling a story or telling a story through a product.
- Can you give an example, because it's kind of intangible? - Yeah. I understand.
For me, I mean there are not that many products around, but the Wake-Up Light by Philips is a very good example.
For those who don't know it, I have one here. So, it looks like this.
And what it does is: you set a certain wake-up time, and half an hour before that it starts lighting up,
and it gets brighter and brighter,
and the moment you have to or you wanted to get up,
it plays back the sound of birds or some bells or whatever you like.
And you can see the story through that object.
You can see how they went to people, asked them – you know – "What is your favorite way of waking up?"
And they said, "Oh, I hate my alarm clock, but sometimes – you know – if I don't have to get up
and the Sun rises and I'm just woken by the light." - And hear the birds!
- And hear the birds, and that's a very nice situation. - Yeah.
- So, now the problem is that life doesn't work like that, so we can't have that experience all the time.
But the product tries to give it to us— - Anyway. - Even in situations...
like a surrogate experience – even in situations where we can't have it.
And now you can say, "Oh that's questionable because it's just fake."
But I don't believe in that – I think it can work, like – you know – love novels work.
They're surrogate experiences. It's not the real thing, but it's still more meaningful to us than a ringing alarm clock.
You know – this is a very technical solution. This would be a more—
- In-between or— - *Experiential* solution, I would say. - Yeah. - And then, the interesting thing is if you look at that design-wise...
I'm an industrial designer; I think it's nothing very special.
Maybe it's even not even very beautiful, I would say, and the interaction is a bit awkward, and so on.
And this definitely matters, and it should be better.
But the basic thing about it is this experience it creates. - Yeah.
- And in that sense it doesn't matter much to the user whether this is – you know –
is (inaudible) or not; it's more like a stand-in or a placeholder for a certain experience you can have.
And this is I think quite different from, for example, something like the iPhone. - Yeah.
Could you describe the difference briefly? - Yeah, the iPhone for me is just an infrastructure.
It's a nice mobile phone. The interesting part, the experiential part is what the applications people load on it
because that will create new opportunities. But what they actually did is they took that gadget and they
designed very nice aesthetics of interaction, and it feels good, but it's an experience created by the product;
only valid for the product, so in that sense. - Yeah. - And I think it's quite a difference because it puts the
product into 4: it makes it something... It's novel and special and I can show it around
– a very materialistic thing in that sense. It also feels better maybe than some buttons or some
– but it's all – you know – the iPhone says that I'm so cool; I'm so different;
it just feels better working with me,
and I would be more in products where you just – you know – *forget the whole product*
and then *care about the experience that is created*. - So, this more post-materialistic?
- Exactly, yeah. - You still have a product but the product is not in the focus.
- Yeah. I like that expression "it transcends its encasing". - Yeah.
- And I don't think that the iPhone – the iPhone does it with the application stores, for example, because
it gives people – it opens up possibilities: you can write your own application,
put it there; you can have everything on that infrastructure,
but the experience is in the application, not in the interaction with the device.
I think we can still have technological progress in consumer electronics.
But at a certain point, it becomes just silly. You know – what else can you put into a mobile phone?
I can't imagine much more. So, first we had the *functions*; then we had the *aesthetics of interaction*.
Now everybody has the touch skills; what are the next steps? And I think then at a certain point we would
switch from a more technology-driven innovation to again
socially driven or human-driven innovations where we just use the same technologies all the time
as infrastructure but come up with new experiences.
- So, this way of designing with the experience in mind, is it something new or has it always been like this?
- For me, I think it's something new and the difference is that
although in the usability community, everybody always said that they have the user in mind,
they still very much focus on the product and the technology used.
And I think it's quite natural because that's where the skills are. You know –
if you're a manufacturer of telephones, mobile phones, you know the technology of mobile phones; so,
naturally you tend to argue, "Hey, I'm manufacturing those
and I'm selling those, so I want to make them good.
But – you know – it's still the technology I'm designing."
And usability is exactly doing that – making it easier, but never questioning the model behind that;
never asking, never questioning "Is a mobile phone the right way / the right device or so?"
You know – we're on that shift from a more materialistic to a more post-materialistic society,
which means – the post-materialistic means that
as a person, I care much more about *positive experiences* I've had in my life;
I'm not caring about possessions so much and about having things.
Sometimes we'll still want it, but I think it's just different shades of materialism.
I'm 40 years old; I have a lot of friends that are in music,
and there are plenty of them who want to have the record,
but I have also younger friends; they don't care that much – they care about *the music*.
And I think that's like the *different shades of materialism*.
So, if you have that *urge to own something*, that is more materialistic.
And if you have this urge of just going through something, and also owning that
but owning the *experience / memories of that*,
and I think that's why digital cameras are so popular,
because people are much more in experiences and they need ways to document it,
and because they won't have these material signifiers of their experience.
So, I think with this change it is something new,
and you can also see that the industry is not so much adapted to it.
So, if you look at technology manufacturers, they do certain types of technologies they're good at. - Yeah.
And, yeah, they put it in a nice casing, they make nice little designs and good interfaces and so on and so on.
But still, a phone is a phone is a phone; they never rethink the whole thing.
- Thank you so much, Marc, for sharing some of your knowledge about user experience and experience design.
And if you want to know more about it and how to put these insights into use when designing products,
you should have a look at our second interview with Marc, and you could also read the chapter
he's written at interactiondesign.org – and here you can also find more chapters like his
and you can find more videos like this one as well. Thank you so much for your time and interest.