Exploring the curricular relationship between service experience design and interaction design

Abstract

Connectivity in the contemporary networked society has required designers to shift their disciplinary focus from individual products to the entirety of human experience. The field of Experience Design (XD), pursuing an integrative flow of human experience, consisting of multiple dimensions [1], and its subsets (interaction design, service design, spatial design, etc.) is growing in both size and complexity. Experience designers are starting to influence an ever-increasing scope of problem spaces. To be successful in today's experience design practice, designers must simultaneously approach problems from a broad, system level and a micro, tangible level and produce strategic design solutions. This work frequently involves the integration of many interconnected deliverables. Being influenced by cultural and social understandings of design, students tend to regard design as what they will make. This perception, with heavy focus on the solution phase in designing, causes a fragmented view in design education. In order to expand students’ integrative understanding of design, we have introduced a framework that is based on the tiers of human experience when engaging with design. We reflect on our experience from this experiment and discuss its values in student learning.