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15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, FranceErgoIA 2014
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Enhancing the Design Process by Embedding HCI
Research into Experience Triggers
Carine Lallemand
CRP Henri Tudor
29 avenue John F. Kennedy
L-1855 Luxembourg
Université du Luxembourg
ECCS Research Unit
L-7220 Walferdange
carine.lallemand@tudor.lu
Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy
Arts & Métiers ParisTech
Product Design and Innovation
Laboratory
151, Bd de l'hôpital
75013 Paris, France
kerstin.blanchy@gmail.com
Ioana Ocnarescu
Strate Collège
27 Av. de la Division Leclerc
92310 Sèvres, France
ioana.ocnarescu@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, User Experience (UX) has become
a core concept in the field of Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI). Beyond the fact of understanding and
assessing the User Experience derived from the use of
interactive systems, practitioners and researchers from a
wide range of disciplines are now facing the challenges
of designing for User Experience.
Some authors have pinpointed the existence of a gap
between the theoretical knowledge developed in HCI
Research and the practical knowledge actually used by
designers to create rich experiences with interactive
artefacts. A special focus of this paper is to translate
theoretical work into experiential objects (or situations)
called “Experience Triggers” [1]. Through their
materiality, these artefacts bring emotions and sensations
to the design process and designers can immerge into
and understand the theories on experience. As a
consequence of this immersion, the final product
designed by the team is assumed to be more experiential.
Experience Triggers are introduced here as a new tool
for science-based UX design.
Keywords
User experience; Design; Experience Triggers;
Materiality; HCI Research; Science-Based Design
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2. User interfaces: User-Centered design
General Terms
Human Factors; Design; Measurement.
INTRODUCTION
In a world moving from a materialistic view to an ever-
growing experiential perspective [33] [18], designing
(for) User Experience (UX) has become a major concern
for both researchers and practitioners [22]. However, the
complexity of designing experiences, and even of
knowing which kind of experiences are desirable or not
in specific contexts of use, is a daily challenge that
experience designers have to cope with. Despite the
availability of theoretical and empirical findings on the
way people interact with and therefore experience the
world and its artefacts, only few artefacts designed
within the HCI field are actually explicitly rooted on this
body of knowledge [21].
This obviously leads to questioning the collaboration
between several disciplines sharing the common goal of
designing interactive products or systems, able to
stimulate positive user experiences. Design, Ergonomics
and HCI are all at the core of interaction design. In
recent approaches that are more and more
interdisciplinary, these disciplines profit from each other
and we see new methodologies and theoretical
frameworks, which do not exclusively relate to one of
these domains only [27]. It is obvious both researchers
and practitioners have started profiting from cross-
fertilization between those domains. It remains unclear
however, how each domain actually contributes to an
integrated design process in order to support UX design
and to what extent there remain domain-specific
approaches [47]. Moreover, studies have shown the
existence of differences between academia and industry
both in the understanding of UX and the underlying UX
design practices [21] [25]. Researchers in the field of UX
are seeking to understand the nature of human
experiences and the drivers of positive experiences with
technologies. Models and theories of UX are developed
and tested. Unfortunately, this ever-growing body of
knowledge developed within the HCI and UX research
fields seems to be actually underused by designers in
practice [21].
To address this issue, the concept of “Experience
Triggers” has been proposed as a promising approach
[1]. Experience Triggers (E.T.) are defined as objects or
situations created for the design team to influence the
design process by embedding design guidelines and
various theories of experience. It is therefore assumed
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Ergo'IA '14, October 15 - 17 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, France
Copyright 2014 ACM 978-1-4503-2970-5/14/10...$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2671470.2671476
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
41
N. Couture, J.M.C. Bastien, T. Dorta (Éds.)
Quelle articulation pour la co-conception de l’interaction?, ErgoIA 2014, ACM
ErgoIA 2014 15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, France
that the use of Experience Triggers within the design
process could help designing for an optimal UX of the
final product.
In this paper, we first examine how the design process
integrates the focus on user experience. We show that
design practitioners underuse the existing body of
knowledge on UX. As a consequence, we introduce the
concept of Experience Triggers as a potential bridge
between UX research and UX practice. The benefits of
Experience Triggers are presented in relation to the
design process and its result. We then propose a first
experiment to test the effectiveness of this approach.
Finally, we discuss perspectives and challenges related to
Experience Triggers as a UX design tool.
DESIGNING (FOR) USER EXPERIENCE
User Experiences are experiences created and shaped
through technology [17]. Designing for User Experience
is frequently considered as a challenge [30] [17] since it
goes beyond the quality or originality of the design and
involves a deep understanding of the way technology
involves people emotionally, intellectually and sensually
[30]. As stated by Hassenzahl [16]: “UX is not about
good industrial design, multi-touch, or fancy interfaces.
It is about transcending the material. It is about creating
an experience through a device”. During the last decade,
several theoretical models have been developed [11] [19]
[28] to account for the complexity of user experience. In
2007, authors of the User Experience Manifesto [26]
stated “developing theoretically sound methodologies for
analysing, designing, engineering and evaluating UX
should be high in the UX research agenda”. Since then,
several UX evaluation and design methods have been
developed and applied in research. It remains however
unclear to what extent these methods have been
transferred into daily practice by UX professionals and
thus needs to be assessed.
We will start by trying to analyse how practitioners do
design to show what could be improved. Noteworthy is
that the population of practitioners working as “UX
Designers” is highly heterogeneous [25]. A majority of
UX Practitioners have been educated in one of those four
fields: Design, Psychology/Social Sciences,
Technology/Software or Human-Computer Interaction
[25]. It is therefore not an easy task to describe design in
practice as each field might apply specific design
processes. In this paper, we will focus on practitioners
educated in the field of Design.
The design process is traditionally constituted of four
phases: Exploration, Generation, Evaluation, and
Communication [5]. During the exploration phase,
designers gather information related to the design brief,
the user, and sources of inspiration. The generation phase
consists in the creation of ideas, mainly through
sketches, storyboards, wireframes and mock-ups. The
evaluation phase consists of selecting the most
appropriate solution(s) among the generated ideas.
Finally the chosen solution is communicated to the
development team and to clients before entering the
product development. Designing for UX is an iterative
process with multiple feedback loops between the
development and evaluation phases. Each of the design
process phases has its specific tools of which a certain
number comes from the HCI or Ergonomics domain and
others that have been developed by the design
community.
First of all, during the exploration phase, the design team
seeks to understand who future users are and what their
use context looks like. Classical methods used in
Ergonomics like field studies, interviews or Focus
Groups [3] help gathering explicit or observable
information. Observations can also be done indirectly
through diaries and camera journals [24] [27]. These
fields-based approaches aimed at understanding users
were accompanied by the development of “Day in the
life” scenarios [31] or Personas [35] in order to make the
gathered information tangible for practitioners. These
methods notably helped field researchers communicate
their findings to designers [46]. Moreover, designers also
need information on tacit or latent user desires [44]. The
design domain has therefore developed own tools like
Design Probes [13] [45] or Role-Playing [40], which
give the future user an active role to play.
Once the user and use context are explored, the identified
needs and desires have to be translated into design ideas.
So far there are no explicit tools used for this UX
generation phase. Most commonly used are creativity
sessions expected to stimulate UX idea generation
through mind maps or brainstorming [5] [16]. Another
way to bring the User Experience into early design steps
is by inviting users to join the generation process, the so-
called participatory design. The goal is to initiate a
dialogue between the designer and the user [34] [37].
However, common design generation tools, like sketch
or wireframing, simply rely on the empathic capacity
(i.e. to project oneself into the user and use context
knowledge while conceiving the interface) of the
designer.
Finally designers have to choose the most promising
solutions from the set of ideas developed so far. To do
so, they often follow their instinct, their project leader or
the client’s choice while more objective UX evaluation is
possible at this stage. Mainly the psychology
components in HCI provide UX design with a range of
tools to test whether or not a design idea is able to trigger
the desired UX. User responses to stimuli come in form
of emotions, sensations, accorded meaning, etc. These
can be measured on three levels: cognition/language,
behavioural events, and physiological events [2].
Conscious UX is often measured with self-evaluation
questionnaires [8] [27]. The behavioural dimension of
UX has so far been the core of Ergonomics. Task
analysis and user testing are classical means to measure
effectiveness and efficiency [42]. Tools like eye-tracking
show which properties of the design the user perceives.
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
42
15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, FranceErgoIA 2014
that the use of Experience Triggers within the design
process could help designing for an optimal UX of the
final product.
In this paper, we first examine how the design process
integrates the focus on user experience. We show that
design practitioners underuse the existing body of
knowledge on UX. As a consequence, we introduce the
concept of Experience Triggers as a potential bridge
between UX research and UX practice. The benefits of
Experience Triggers are presented in relation to the
design process and its result. We then propose a first
experiment to test the effectiveness of this approach.
Finally, we discuss perspectives and challenges related to
Experience Triggers as a UX design tool.
DESIGNING (FOR) USER EXPERIENCE
User Experiences are experiences created and shaped
through technology [17]. Designing for User Experience
is frequently considered as a challenge [30] [17] since it
goes beyond the quality or originality of the design and
involves a deep understanding of the way technology
involves people emotionally, intellectually and sensually
[30]. As stated by Hassenzahl [16]: “UX is not about
good industrial design, multi-touch, or fancy interfaces.
It is about transcending the material. It is about creating
an experience through a device”. During the last decade,
several theoretical models have been developed [11] [19]
[28] to account for the complexity of user experience. In
2007, authors of the User Experience Manifesto [26]
stated “developing theoretically sound methodologies for
analysing, designing, engineering and evaluating UX
should be high in the UX research agenda”. Since then,
several UX evaluation and design methods have been
developed and applied in research. It remains however
unclear to what extent these methods have been
transferred into daily practice by UX professionals and
thus needs to be assessed.
We will start by trying to analyse how practitioners do
design to show what could be improved. Noteworthy is
that the population of practitioners working as “UX
Designers” is highly heterogeneous [25]. A majority of
UX Practitioners have been educated in one of those four
fields: Design, Psychology/Social Sciences,
Technology/Software or Human-Computer Interaction
[25]. It is therefore not an easy task to describe design in
practice as each field might apply specific design
processes. In this paper, we will focus on practitioners
educated in the field of Design.
The design process is traditionally constituted of four
phases: Exploration, Generation, Evaluation, and
Communication [5]. During the exploration phase,
designers gather information related to the design brief,
the user, and sources of inspiration. The generation phase
consists in the creation of ideas, mainly through
sketches, storyboards, wireframes and mock-ups. The
evaluation phase consists of selecting the most
appropriate solution(s) among the generated ideas.
Finally the chosen solution is communicated to the
development team and to clients before entering the
product development. Designing for UX is an iterative
process with multiple feedback loops between the
development and evaluation phases. Each of the design
process phases has its specific tools of which a certain
number comes from the HCI or Ergonomics domain and
others that have been developed by the design
community.
First of all, during the exploration phase, the design team
seeks to understand who future users are and what their
use context looks like. Classical methods used in
Ergonomics like field studies, interviews or Focus
Groups [3] help gathering explicit or observable
information. Observations can also be done indirectly
through diaries and camera journals [24] [27]. These
fields-based approaches aimed at understanding users
were accompanied by the development of “Day in the
life” scenarios [31] or Personas [35] in order to make the
gathered information tangible for practitioners. These
methods notably helped field researchers communicate
their findings to designers [46]. Moreover, designers also
need information on tacit or latent user desires [44]. The
design domain has therefore developed own tools like
Design Probes [13] [45] or Role-Playing [40], which
give the future user an active role to play.
Once the user and use context are explored, the identified
needs and desires have to be translated into design ideas.
So far there are no explicit tools used for this UX
generation phase. Most commonly used are creativity
sessions expected to stimulate UX idea generation
through mind maps or brainstorming [5] [16]. Another
way to bring the User Experience into early design steps
is by inviting users to join the generation process, the so-
called participatory design. The goal is to initiate a
dialogue between the designer and the user [34] [37].
However, common design generation tools, like sketch
or wireframing, simply rely on the empathic capacity
(i.e. to project oneself into the user and use context
knowledge while conceiving the interface) of the
designer.
Finally designers have to choose the most promising
solutions from the set of ideas developed so far. To do
so, they often follow their instinct, their project leader or
the client’s choice while more objective UX evaluation is
possible at this stage. Mainly the psychology
components in HCI provide UX design with a range of
tools to test whether or not a design idea is able to trigger
the desired UX. User responses to stimuli come in form
of emotions, sensations, accorded meaning, etc. These
can be measured on three levels: cognition/language,
behavioural events, and physiological events [2].
Conscious UX is often measured with self-evaluation
questionnaires [8] [27]. The behavioural dimension of
UX has so far been the core of Ergonomics. Task
analysis and user testing are classical means to measure
effectiveness and efficiency [42]. Tools like eye-tracking
show which properties of the design the user perceives.
Last but not least, physiological parameters like body
temperature, heart rate, breath rhythm, sweating, etc.
[38] as well as facial and other somatic muscle
movements can be indicators for UX design [2]. They
provide data on arousal or valence (i.e. positive vs
negative feelings) evoked by a stimulus.
To summarize, this analysis of design in practice allows
us to see that UX Design benefits from numerous tools
coming from Ergonomics, Design and HCI. Designers
already employ various UX specific tools and methods,
especially during the exploration and evaluation phases.
However, there seems to be a lack of tools to support
practitioners in the design of UX for the generation
phase. This is not surprising considering that, even in
research, few methods only exist to design for UX.
Amongst them, the use of Experience Patterns [20] or
Needs-Driven Experience Design approaches [23] are
rarely known by designers. Another observation that can
be made is that practitioners are developing and using
many design methods that have never been rigorously
tested [9]. Design practice and HCI research could
benefit from a closer integration. HCI research can help
designers in the rigorous development of new methods,
while designers can provide researchers with industrial
use cases to test and enhance design methods.
SCIENTIFIC GROUNDING OF CURRENT PRACTICE IN
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Experience Design requires a deep understanding of
people [19], their cognitive and affective processes (e.g.
such as cognition, affects, motivation and volition) and
basic needs. A profound theoretical and empirical
knowledge on the understanding of human experiences
has been accumulated through decades of research in
several fields such as psychology, sociology, ethnology,
philosophy, etc. Universal human needs have for
example been identified and thoroughly investigated
[39], as well as psycho-cognitive and psycho-social
processes, human values [36], human emotions [12] [38]
or even optimal experiences at a more generic level [7].
All these considerations are crucial when studying
human experiences and especially, within the HCI
research field, user experiences with interactive systems
and artefacts.
Unfortunately, despite the availability of theoretical and
empirical psychological findings, it seems that existing
knowledge remains largely underutilized by designers. In
a systematic review of 92 publications presenting 143
artefacts from the HCI and Interaction Design domain,
Hassenzahl et al. [21] show that less than half of those
make explicit use of external theoretical and empirical
psychological knowledge. This might be explained by a
commonly shared ‘bottom-up approach to the analysis of
people and contexts […] (where) designers immerse
themselves into the context to build up the empathy
necessary for sensible design’ [21].
Even if the HCI community is highly interdisciplinary by
nature, another reason explaining this phenomenon could
be the feeling of incompetence to master concepts from
other disciplines, especially those studying the human
with regard to his full complexity, such as psychology.
Moreover, setting academic and research areas aside, it is
easily understandable that designers (as practitioners)
may neither have full access to this body of knowledge
nor have the time to get acquainted with and use it within
their designs [16]. Finally, designers might also fear to
constrain their creativity and inspiration if relying on
theoretical knowledge instead of listening to their
sensitive empathic feelings towards potential future
users.
In summary, despite the fact that designers adopt more
and more of the tools and methods developed by the
research community for the exploration and evaluation
phases, there are few tools only specifically developed
for User Experience generation. Therefore we propose
“Experience Triggers” as one way to transfer HCI
knowledge to designers in an attractive way.
EXPERIENCE TRIGGERS: EXPERIENCING TO
DESIGN BETTER EXPERIENCES
The concept of “Experience Triggers” [1] is based on the
assumption that experiencing through materiality will
help designing better experiences. Living a specific
experience before or during the design process might
unconsciously help designers to develop an intuitive and
empathic knowledge about the experience(s) an object
can evoke. Once the experiential purpose is understood
(even intuitively) by the designers, we assume they are
more likely to find ways of expressing and designing this
specific experience through the interactive object or
system.
Our idea is to speak the same language as designers,
materiality being a potential medium to reach this goal.
The ability of artefacts to embody and thus mirror
theoretical notions, concepts and empirical findings
became therefore the core idea of Experience Triggers as
an inspirational tool for UX generation.
What are Experience Triggers and what benefits do
they bring to the Design Process?
Experience triggers (E.T.) are objects or situations
created by a UX expert, whose goal consists of
embedding specific theories of experience within those
objects or situations.
E.T.s serve three purposes in the design process:
1. to bridge theory and practice by providing
designers with new knowledge in an informal
way, that is intuitively integrated and does not
constrain creativity;
2. to enable designers to experience the type of
experience they seek to create;
3. to unite the design team around a reference
experience.
Experience Triggers are introduced within the design
process during the early steps of idea generation. They
are intended to help designers understanding a specific
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
43
ErgoIA 2014 15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, France
theory of experience without actually having to read
anything formal about it. E.T. will bring new knowledge
on human experience that will potentially be intuitively
integrated and does not constrain the creativity of
designers. Being informal, this embedded knowledge is
also less likely to hinder the empathy developed by
designers using a bottom-up approach to the analysis of
people and contexts. By interacting with E.T. we
therefore expect designers to gain new insights on how
to design positive experiences, for example how
interactive products might support final users in the
fulfilment of their primary needs [39] [19]. Moreover,
the use of E.T. might also trigger the designers’ interest
in theories and encourage them to further explore the
literature on human experience.
The main assumption behind E.T. is that designers will
design better product experiences if they have been
previously (i.e. during the design process) immersed in
the experience they seek to create. Lived experiences are
hard to express and to understand using words and the
vocabulary often fails to transmit with accuracy feelings
or emotions. People thus frequently feel that their peers
or beloved ones are not able to understand what they feel
during a memorable event unless they live the same
experience. Placing designers in a situation of intense
relatedness or making them feel the optimal experience
of flow [7] might be a good way to help them transfer
this concern in the objects or system they are designing.
As inspirational objects, E.T. could stimulate designers
to feel something and then do something creative by
analogy, so that final users will feel the same experience.
In design, analogical reasoning plays a double role by
supporting creativity and learning simultaneously [14].
For now, design by analogy has been focused mostly on
visual, textual or functional analogy [5] [15]. In our case,
we intend E.T. to act as “experiential analogies”. It is the
felt experience of the final product that is meant to be
designed by analogy. Imagining different sets of E.T. to
reflect the numerous existing but unfortunately
underused theories of UX would therefore be a good way
to enhance design practice.
As experiential objects, beyond the fact of embedding a
theory of experience (or some elements of a theory),
Experience Triggers are meant to boost the creativity of
the design team and stimulate a better group dynamic.
Indeed, as it is not that trivial to embed a UX theory in a
common object, E.T. are likely to be designed under the
form of very peculiar objects or situations. This
assumption has been explored during a first workshop
[1] where we asked 35 participants (all of them being
UX practitioners or researchers) to act as E.T. designers.
Working in small teams during about an hour,
participants had to study four specific human needs:
security relatedness, pleasure and self-esteem adapted
from Sheldon et al. [39] and to come up with tangible
objects embedding this experience. Two of the resulting
E.T. objects are presented in Figure 1. Participants from
other groups tested the designed E.T. Despite the very
explorative nature of this first experiment, we were able
to witness the potential power of E.T. to have an effect
on designers by triggering something (at this point we
are not able to characterize exactly what kind of feelings
/ emotions etc. have been triggered) and stimulate a
reflection. Research has shown that the more a lived
experience is interesting, intense, confusing or
impressive, the more humans feel the need to talk about
it and to share it with others [17]. Sharing experiences
has a high social value and helps feeling related to others
[43]. Therefore, we expect the possibly complex and
unusual nature of E.T. to be experiential in itself and
hence likely to foster discussions and debates between
team members. Several design tools already use
materiality to inspire design teams and create a shared
experience, like for example the well-known design
probes [13] or the open-ended objects imagined by Cruz
& Gaudron [6].
Figure 1. Examples of draft Experience Triggers created
during the UX Workshop [1]. Left: ‘security’ E.T., right:
‘relatedness’ E.T.
Thanks to their experiential nature, E.T. are also meant
to resonate with the personal history of the designer.
Each E.T., by triggering a specific experience, inevitably
relates to the identity of the designer using it. It will
evoke memories of objects or previous experiences and
will therefore help designers to rely on past experiences
and personal history to get design inspiration. As an UX
ideation tool, E.T. can be classified as an intuitive
approach, meant to help designers to “break routines and
overcome mental blocks” [16].
The design of Experience Triggers
The design of Experience Triggers basically requires
three main elements:
a UX expert, who designs a single or a set of E.T.
(i.e. objects or situations) assisted by an artist or
designer for the creation of the object.
a theory of experience to be embedded or partly
embedded within this set of E.T.
a methodology or guidelines to guarantee the
coherence and effectiveness of the process.
Experience Trigger designers are specialists in human
experience and could be new actors in the design
process. Their role is to embed design guidelines and
theories of experience within objects or situations in
order to influence the design process. In that sense,
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
44
15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, FranceErgoIA 2014
Experience Triggers act as tangible translations of a
specific body of knowledge on Experience Design.
Experience Trigger designers might be considered as
“Meta-Designers”, since they will not directly be
involved in the design of a specific product or system but
will influence the whole process by providing the design
team with one or several particular E.T. A solution to
cope with the fact that experts having both fundamental
(i.e. being an expert at a theoretical level) and creative
skills (i.e. being able to design an object) are hard - if not
impossible - to find, would be a collaboration between a
specialist in human experience and an artist or creative
designer.
There is no comprehensive list of theories of experience
that the E.T. designer might be willing to embed in E.T.;
they might be as diverse as the theories of user
experiences. Depending on his background and
knowledge, the E.T. designer may use theories from
HCI, Design and Ergonomics but also from disciplines
such as psychology, social sciences, cognitive sciences
or even biology.
Last but not least, designing Experience Triggers
requires a process to support E.T. designers in their work
(see Figure 2). We propose the following methodology
as a starting point:
1. Selection of a theory on user experience: the
E.T. designer selects a theory to be embedded
into the E.T.
2. Extraction of key elements: the E.T. designer
extracts key findings of the theory. If working
in collaboration with a designer or an artist, he
transcripts these key findings under an easy-to-
understand form.
3. Idea generation: the E.T. designer (and his
collaborators) explores concrete and tangible
experiential translations of the theory. These
might be physical objects or role-playing
situations.
4. Creation of one or several E.T.: the E.T.
designer and his collaborator choose the most
appropriate form for their E.T. and generate one
or several E.T.s.
5. Pre-Evaluation of E.T.: before providing a
design team with the novel set of E.T., a pre-
evaluation on a control group is performed to
ensure that the E.T. truly triggers the intended
experience.
6. E.T. in use: the design team interacts with or
manipulates the Trigger object during their
design activity.
7. UX evaluation of the final design: test if the
intended experience was translated into a design
solution.
Now that we have presented the concept of E.T., the
rationale behind the development of this new method and
the main expected outcomes, we need to assess the
potential of E.T. as a new tool to design for UX.
Assessing the potential of Experience Triggers as a
new tool to design for User Experience
During our preliminary workshop on Experience Design
organized in Paris during the FLUPA UX-Day 2013 [1],
the community of French UX practitioners showed a
strong interest for the concept of “Experience Triggers”.
Feedback gathered during a short post-task questionnaire
shows that the Triggers were perceived as a potentially
valuable bridge between research and design practice.
However, this exploratory experiment does not allow us
to claim any benefit provided by Experience Triggers. A
more thorough and scientific-based experiment is
planned within the next few months.
To assess the potential of Experience Triggers, one
should positively answer two main questions:
Is the final product better than it would have
been without Experience Triggers?
Is the design process experience more
memorable (i.e. will be remembered as a
particularly positive experience) than it would
have been without Experience Triggers?
The goal of the study is to test the potential of the E.T.
by comparing three design teams (3-4 members per
team) during a design challenge. All teams will work on
the same design brief, i.e. a short written document
focused on the desired results of design. This document
also includes basic data on target users and the context of
use. The type of object or system to be designed will
therefore be determined beforehand. The theory of UX
that will be embedded in E.T. for this experiment is
derived from the Psychological Needs-Driven
Experience Design approach [23], which states that
technology shapes experiences through fulfilling (or not
fulfilling) certain psychological needs.
The experiment will be an independent measures design
involving three independent groups. A first team will act
Figure 2. Experience Triggers Methodology
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
45
ErgoIA 2014 15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, France
as a control group and will therefore design a specific
object only by using their knowledge and expertise. A
second team will design the same kind of object by using
UX Cards (which are cards formally describing a theory
of UX). These UX Cards (designed by the first author of
this paper) constitute an intermediate condition, using a
formal source of knowledge about human experience.
They will allow us to see how designers welcome formal
UX theories and how textual stimuli will influence idea
generation. Previous findings seem contradictory on this
issue, some studies arguing that text stimuli may have
negative effects [29] while some others [15] show a
positive influence of word stimuli as compared to no
external stimuli. Finally the third team will design the
object by using one or several Experience Triggers
embedding the same UX theory as the UX Cards
provided to the second team. In order to control for
biases, a special attention will be paid to the
homogeneity of the groups, i.e. the seniority of team
members, the educational background, previous
collaboration experience between members, etc.
After the design task, the experiential potential of each
designed objects or system will be assessed both by UX
experts and potential final users. Qualitative and
quantitative measures will be used for this assessment.
We also assess the experience lived by the members of
each design team in order to know whether the presence
and use of E.T. contribute to foster discussions and
creativity within the design team. This planned
experiment should show how effective E.T. are to
enhance the design process.
While this preliminary work on the concept of
Experience Triggers is very motivating and might lead to
promising outcomes for the practice of design, we are
aware that a lot of critical questions on this new tool
remain unanswered at this stage. We discuss some of
these issues in the last part of this paper.
DISCUSSION
The rationale behind the idea of E.T. is the existence of a
gap between research and practice [21] [25] that we
would like to reduce by translating the theoretical body
and methodologies of researchers into the language of
designers. However, we are aware that this translation is
very challenging. Experiential objects are already hard to
create without having to embed any specific theoretical
knowledge. Since these kinds of objects or situations
should trigger rich experiences specific to a future
product or service, one could raise further questions:
should every company invent its own E.T.s based on
theories that seem relevant to its projects? Or should
E.T.s be universal and only specific to UX theories? For
now it is indeed impossible to say if E.T. will be
valuable for every designer, dealing with every possible
design problem in any design context. As stated by Dorst
[9], design research should not only focus on design
processes, as if they would be universally valid for each
design context, but also on a “deep and systematic
understanding of the design object, the designer and the
design context” ([9], p.6).
Another question raised by E.T. is their potential of
stimulating analogical reasoning, i.e. being used as
examples of what should be lived and felt by final users
through the use of the product. Our assumption is that
designers live specific a kind of experience and then, by
analogy, intuitively embed this specific experience in the
final product, so that final users will live the same
experience. In a study on the influence on analogies
during idea generation, Casakin [4] shows that designers
are stimulated by visual analogues (pictures) without any
instruction to use analogical reasoning. Participants to
our experimental study will therefore not be instructed to
use the felt experience to design by analogy. After this
first experiment, a considerable amount of work will be
needed to explore the conditions required for E.T. to be
an effective design tool.
Furthermore, E.T. as tangible objects also carry the risk
of subjective interpretation of the intuitive knowledge
they are supposed to embed. The question is: do E.T.
trigger the same experience for all members of a team
design? Based on research findings on inspiration in
design [46] [10], the answer would be “not really”. Each
E.T. will resonate differently for each person, depending
on her personal history and sensitivity [46]. We do not
fear subjectivity in the interpretation of E.T. as we
consider this as a positive outcome that might foster
dynamic group discussions and idea generation.
However, this dynamic is only one goal out of the three
main goals assigned to E.T. Despite its interest, it is
probably the easiest goal to achieve and numerous
existing tools and design methods succeed in doing so.
The biggest goal that might be hindered by this
subjective interpretation of E.T. is the one of knowledge
embedding. We do not intend the E.T. to trigger the
same singular feelings for each person, but we do intend
that these feelings relate to the same kind of experience.
For example, an object might be considered as aesthetic
for one person and anaesthetics for another depending on
their personal taste. This subjective assessment is an
inevitable process and might be seen as a critical issue
for the design of E.T. However, we believe that this is
not a problem if the main goal of the object was to
embed the notion of visual pleasure, the feeling of visual
displeasure being one possible expression of this global
intended experiential notion. No matter if some designers
have experienced visual pleasure while others have
experienced displeasure as long as all of them have
intuitively understood the importance of including visual
pleasure as an experiential quality of their final design.
The experiment we intend to conduct within the next few
months will be a first step to explore the potential of E.T.
as a new UX design tool. We hope to be able to analyse
the way E.T. impact the design process and the quality of
design outcomes. We also aim at finding ways of
Session: Conception et expérience utilisateur
46
15-17 octobre 2014, Bidart-Biarritz, FranceErgoIA 2014
as a control group and will therefore design a specific
object only by using their knowledge and expertise. A
second team will design the same kind of object by using
UX Cards (which are cards formally describing a theory
of UX). These UX Cards (designed by the first author of
this paper) constitute an intermediate condition, using a
formal source of knowledge about human experience.
They will allow us to see how designers welcome formal
UX theories and how textual stimuli will influence idea
generation. Previous findings seem contradictory on this
issue, some studies arguing that text stimuli may have
negative effects [29] while some others [15] show a
positive influence of word stimuli as compared to no
external stimuli. Finally the third team will design the
object by using one or several Experience Triggers
embedding the same UX theory as the UX Cards
provided to the second team. In order to control for
biases, a special attention will be paid to the
homogeneity of the groups, i.e. the seniority of team
members, the educational background, previous
collaboration experience between members, etc.
After the design task, the experiential potential of each
designed objects or system will be assessed both by UX
experts and potential final users. Qualitative and
quantitative measures will be used for this assessment.
We also assess the experience lived by the members of
each design team in order to know whether the presence
and use of E.T. contribute to foster discussions and
creativity within the design team. This planned
experiment should show how effective E.T. are to
enhance the design process.
While this preliminary work on the concept of
Experience Triggers is very motivating and might lead to
promising outcomes for the practice of design, we are
aware that a lot of critical questions on this new tool
remain unanswered at this stage. We discuss some of
these issues in the last part of this paper.
DISCUSSION
The rationale behind the idea of E.T. is the existence of a
gap between research and practice [21] [25] that we
would like to reduce by translating the theoretical body
and methodologies of researchers into the language of
designers. However, we are aware that this translation is
very challenging. Experiential objects are already hard to
create without having to embed any specific theoretical
knowledge. Since these kinds of objects or situations
should trigger rich experiences specific to a future
product or service, one could raise further questions:
should every company invent its own E.T.s based on
theories that seem relevant to its projects? Or should
E.T.s be universal and only specific to UX theories? For
now it is indeed impossible to say if E.T. will be
valuable for every designer, dealing with every possible
design problem in any design context. As stated by Dorst
[9], design research should not only focus on design
processes, as if they would be universally valid for each
design context, but also on a “deep and systematic
understanding of the design object, the designer and the
design context” ([9], p.6).
Another question raised by E.T. is their potential of
stimulating analogical reasoning, i.e. being used as
examples of what should be lived and felt by final users
through the use of the product. Our assumption is that
designers live specific a kind of experience and then, by
analogy, intuitively embed this specific experience in the
final product, so that final users will live the same
experience. In a study on the influence on analogies
during idea generation, Casakin [4] shows that designers
are stimulated by visual analogues (pictures) without any
instruction to use analogical reasoning. Participants to
our experimental study will therefore not be instructed to
use the felt experience to design by analogy. After this
first experiment, a considerable amount of work will be
needed to explore the conditions required for E.T. to be
an effective design tool.
Furthermore, E.T. as tangible objects also carry the risk
of subjective interpretation of the intuitive knowledge
they are supposed to embed. The question is: do E.T.
trigger the same experience for all members of a team
design? Based on research findings on inspiration in
design [46] [10], the answer would be “not really”. Each
E.T. will resonate differently for each person, depending
on her personal history and sensitivity [46]. We do not
fear subjectivity in the interpretation of E.T. as we
consider this as a positive outcome that might foster
dynamic group discussions and idea generation.
However, this dynamic is only one goal out of the three
main goals assigned to E.T. Despite its interest, it is
probably the easiest goal to achieve and numerous
existing tools and design methods succeed in doing so.
The biggest goal that might be hindered by this
subjective interpretation of E.T. is the one of knowledge
embedding. We do not intend the E.T. to trigger the
same singular feelings for each person, but we do intend
that these feelings relate to the same kind of experience.
For example, an object might be considered as aesthetic
for one person and anaesthetics for another depending on
their personal taste. This subjective assessment is an
inevitable process and might be seen as a critical issue
for the design of E.T. However, we believe that this is
not a problem if the main goal of the object was to
embed the notion of visual pleasure, the feeling of visual
displeasure being one possible expression of this global
intended experiential notion. No matter if some designers
have experienced visual pleasure while others have
experienced displeasure as long as all of them have
intuitively understood the importance of including visual
pleasure as an experiential quality of their final design.
The experiment we intend to conduct within the next few
months will be a first step to explore the potential of E.T.
as a new UX design tool. We hope to be able to analyse
the way E.T. impact the design process and the quality of
design outcomes. We also aim at finding ways of
improving this method by understanding design
mechanisms involved in the use of E.T.
CONCLUSION
In the current experience economy [33], designing rich or
memorable user experiences has become a key goal to
achieve when designing interactive products. For more
than a decade, research studies are conducted to
understand the mechanisms underlying user experiences
and to develop UX evaluation and design methods.
However, as we have seen, the bridge between research
and practice, as well as the effective integration of
several disciplines in the design process, is not yet fully
successful
.
Experience Triggers are introduced here as a new
promising tool for the design of UX. By embedding
some theoretical knowledge about user experiences
within artefacts or situations to be used or lived by
designers, we hope to enhance the quality of both the
design process and the design outcomes. The concept of
E.T. is only in its early stages and numerous challenging
questions are raised. An experimental study will be
conducted to bring understanding about the benefits,
limitations and prerequisite of E.T. design and usage as a
UX design tool.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The present project is supported by the National
Research Fund, Luxembourg. The authors would like to
thank Jean-Baptiste Labrune for the highly valuable
contributions made to this project, as well as Vincent
Koenig for feedback on drafts of this paper.
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