Blogging Adaptive Path UX Week - Jesse James Garrett Intro
I’m currently at Adaptive Path’s User Experience Week 2006 in Washington, DC. I meant to do blog as I went, but I’m behind, so this is a recap.
Jesse James Garrett opened the week discussing the idea of “designed experiences,” which function as the structure for peoples’ lives. Using a Volkswagen commercial as a backdrop, Garret explained how the commercial’s character lived in a world where the character’s experiences didn’t connect with him. This is the stark opposite of what a well-designed, positive experience seeks to do: it seeks to connect the end user (or receiver) to the product, world, or other people.
Garrett stated that design is the “lens through which we understand our relationship to the world,” and might “help us move closer to our best selves” by connecting us with our lives in the world around us; it makes us think. He further argued that designed experiences are both “ancient and deep,” ideas that have been around as long as man and bring us closer to understanding by putting our daily lives and thoughts in context.
Historically, the “designed experiences” of our lives were interpreted by scribes and by shamans. Scribes simplified the world around us with their writings, categorizing and simplifying things as they saw them (Garrett linked them to Information Architects in today’s Internet world, organizing and presenting information so that it makes sense. The second group, shamans, provided structure for our lives by giving us incantations and rituals, perscriptions we could follow to live a good life (Garrett likened them to Interaction Designers, who give us the proper channels into the products, services, and technologies we use every day).
Garrett likened modern-day technologists to the scribes and shamans: they provide structure for everyone’s daily life through the artifacts they build. That word processing program you use every day is just like the ritual performed hundreds of years ago: it is an artifact of a designed experience; a channel through which we can interact with the world.
One only thinks of “designed experiences” as products of today’s marketing culture. This idea that the designed experience is truly “ancient and deep,” something that has been around as long as man really helps build the senses of permanence and importance around our daily work: you’re not just building a website, you’re desinging an expeience and building a channel that someone will use to interact with the world around them.
