Don’t lose the artifact

We should be careful not to allow the word “experience” to become synonymous with “artifact”.

We still have to design artifacts as a means to “designing an experience”. It is not as if we stop designing artifacts and start designing experiences. It is not artifact OR experience. It is artifact AND experience.

With experience design, both the artifact and the experience are designed together. To speak of “experiences” instead of “artifacts” — to lose the distinction between the artifact and some person’s experience of the artifact — the concept of experience will be garbled, degraded and leveled down and made more and more identical to artifact.

Before we know it we will find ourselves designing things or strategizing about technologies and channels and processes — with no reference to anyone’s experience of anything — and calling them “experiences”.

To design an experience means to design artifacts in such a way that the designer never loses sight of one key truth: the experiencer of the artifact will certainly experience it differently than the designer. The point of the artifact we are designing is to provide a particular kind of experience to particular people. And this difference cannot be a general fact that a difference exists. That is only relativism. And it can’t be mere goodwill. That is only sentimentality. The difference must be taken seriously — seriously enough that the specific differences are researched, that the insights from the research guide the design, and that the design is tested with those who will encounter it, interact with it and experience it.

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One more important point: a lot of craftsmanship  goes into the design of an artifact wonderful enough to provide a wonderful experience. In the end, craft has everything to do with whether we experience love or indifference or annoyance when we interact with a designed artifact. Real craft cannot be researched or tested or processed into existence. It is not the mere absence of flaws. But part of great craft is the ability to respond not only to what is being crafted, but also to the person for whom the artifact is crafted.