The experience and the user-experience

The experience and the user-experience

The Experience is the product

You push the button, we do the rest! – Kodak, and the development of consumer camera technology can be seen as an example for how not just technology, but also the surrounding experience can be seen as a product. The simplicity afforded by a system taking care of development and setup of photographs allowed a wider audience to utilise photography and enabled it to be a more lifestyle-oriented practice, as opposed to a past time for the «geek». Similarly, the Ipod represented a shift to a design encompassing buying, managing music with the ITunes software and store and created an easy to use, if closed off environment.

Personally, I have noticed a preference towards the more open, “tool-like” approach to design. For instance, I remember the fact that the Ipod was part of this whole environment and that it necessed operating within it’s structure as a central reason I didn’t buy one. Of course this is looking way back by now, and was based also on other biases I held, but still I tend to dislike it when a product seems to suggest too much, how it should be used, and by extension, how I should live.

Looking a bit further, Social Media presents an interesting field of research, both concerning the interactions with the programs and between users. The experience of using social media can vary strongly, especially since some sites are geared towards creating an online persona, using media such as photos to construct an image and gain exposure with is then rewarded through the likes of likes or followers. Other platforms deny the possibility to construct this image, focussing more on discussion, anonymity, with both ones audience and opposite being unknown. The responses are more direct and the accumulative effect lessend. Going even further, some basically resemble shouting into a void.