The Experience of Evolution: Developments in Design Practice

Abstract

Designers today have opportunities to design much more than simply static objects. We are designing integrated and dynamic interactions with objects, spaces and services and helping companies with more strategic decisions. Expanded opportunities have spawned developments in traditional design practice.

First are developments relating to awareness of people's experience. Design- and user-research methods are evolving. Combinations of projective techniques and empathic exercises are more holistic in scope and yield results that can be more viscerally understood.

A second development is in representing multiple dimensions of people's experience through modelling tools used to explore design ideas. Video scenarios and enactment enable explorations, in more dynamic ways, of what it will be like to interact with new designs.

Finally, both design teams and client groups involve professionals from multiple disciplines and business functions. Tools such as experience prototyping are being developed to promote shared visions and to enable the communication of experiential design ideas in compelling ways.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Fulton Suri

BIOGRAPHY

Jane Fulton Suri leads human factors design and research at IDEO, the international design consultancy based in California. With degrees in psychology and architecture, she first worked at ICE Ergonomics in Loughborough, leaving to join an industrial design company in San Francisco which merged with others to create IDEO in 1991. Since then she has pioneered their human-centred approach, evolving the use of empathic methods and experience prototyping in design of products, environments, services and media for clients in multiple industries. She continues to build and develop the practice, leading the company's now sizable international community of human factors professionals and other designers on both strategic and tactical projects. Her work has been recognized by several design awards including IDSA/Business Week and Industrie Form Europe. She is also a regular visiting lecturer at Stanford University, the Hass School of Business at U.C. Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts.