Blog Topic # 6 Experience Design

In the broadest sense, experience design is fully interactive. Regardless of the medium, experience design uses our understanding of the real world as well as our use of the five senses in order to more effectively create a compelling experience. A sense of time and space is preserved while interactivity is maximized. A website that uses experience design must balance the user experience with the design goals. Sufficiently simple access to information should not be hindered by overly complex navigation.

The website Aualeu (Aualeu.ro) uses experience design effectively. It is an interactive site promoting a Romanian theater group. This site's mood is appropriate to the whimsical design. The site does not contain the traditional spaces for site ID, menu and content. The site is highly artistic, as it uses graphics very heavily. Visitors select what information they want to look at by clicking on moving objects, dragging selected areas of the page of the or by moving the mouse off the page. The user must actively engage in exploring the website in order to get any information at all. The overall impression is that the user is compelled to conceptualize the website as a somewhat 3-d space rather than a traditional list. Due to the higher level of interactivity,the website loads a little more slowly than traditional websites. Aualeu.ro acknowledges this by telling the viewer "Loading takes forever. Why are you whining?" In this case the navigational complications of experience design allow for a greater sense of drama.

The instructions for navigation are somewhat vague, which encourages a sense of exploration. Next to a figure of a semi-mechanical boy the website includes the instructions, "Oh! Oh K! Go to boy-menu, show him where you want to go and then place you mouse at the border." This type of navigation is intended to engage the viewer in the total Aualeu experience. Rather than simply observing the content in the most straightforward manner, the user feels more involved in the creation of the meaning of the website.

Although I found the navigation something of a challenge at first, the website design is ultimately more powerful and memorable than a traditional website. Finding information became an exploratory game. The website does offer a "petite" version, which lays out the information such as the Auleau background and a listing of performances in a traditional website. This option ensures that users who do not have the time or inclination to explore will be able to get information easily. By providing an experience design-oriented site along with a traditional site, creativity is reconciled with the need for usability.

I don't think that experience and design are mutually exclusive. Experience design is obviously not appropriate in some cases. I think that it is likely that as people become more adept at using technology and as technology continues to develop usability, the use of experience design will be expanded.