Exploring Experience Design

Book excerpt: Learn how to unify Customer Experience, User Experience and more to shape lasting customer engagement in a world of rapid change. About This Book An introductory guide to Experience Design that will help you break into XD as a career by gaining A strong foundational knowledge Get acquainted with the various phases of a typical Experience Design workflow Work through the key process and techniques in XD, supported by most of the common use cases Who This Book Is For This book is for designers who wish to enter the field of UX Design, especially Programmers, Content Strategists, and Organizations keen to understand the core concepts of UX Design. What You Will Learn Understand why Experience Design (XD) is at the forefront of business priorities, as organizations race to innovate products and services in order to compete for customers in a global economy driven by technology and change Get motivated by the numerous professional opportunities that XD opens up for practitioners in wide-ranging domains, and by the stories of real XD practitioners Understand what experience is, how experiences are designed, and why they are effective Gain knowledge of user-centered design principles, methodologies, and best practices that will improve your product (digital or physical) Get to know your X's and D's—understand the differences between XD and UX, CX, IxD, IA, SD, VD, PD, and other design practices In Detail We live in an experience economy in which interaction with products is valued more than owning them. Products are expected to engage and delight in order to form the emotional bonds that forge long-term customer loyalty: Products need to anticipate our needs and perform tasks for us: refrigerators order food, homes monitor energy, and cars drive autonomously; they track our vitals, sleep, location, finances, interactions, and content use; recognize our biometric signatures, chat with us, understand and motivate us. Beautiful and easy to use, products have to be fully customizable to match our personal preferences. Accomplishing these feats is easier said than done, but a solution has emerged in the form of Experience design (XD), the unifying approach to fusing business, technology and design around a user-centered philosophy. This book explores key dimensions of XD: Close collaboration among interdisciplinary teams, rapid iteration and ongoing user validation. We cover the processes, methodologies, tools, techniques and best-practices practitioners use throughout the entire product development life-cycle, as ideas are transformed to into positive experiences which lead to perpetual customer engagement and brand loyalty.