User Experience

We as humans experience our surroundings in many different ways. Therefore a product, which is designed for a purpose tend to evoke such experience. In the evolution of product design, this experiences seem to play a bigger role more and more. There is a clear tendency of a shift from product to experience; Experience is the product!

The experience is the product

The early beginning of a deploying a user experience can be described through the launch of the Kodak brownies camera. Its intention was to create a community (and contest) through their technological product. This describes a feeling of association which emerges from a design. This feeling is called User Experience (in short UX). There are different Types of UX-Types, a product could aim for: Self-Expression, Haptic Experience, Emotional Experience and Immersive User Experience.

When we look back in history we realise, that internet changed a lot in our daily experience. The way we look for public transport connections, watch movies, book flights and journeys and also look for accommodations is very different compared to products 50 years ago. Technology goes along with the experience.

User Experience and new media

The rise of the new media gave us the ability of digital inclusion, free culture (and many more aspects), but also networked sociality through social media platforms (eg. twitter, facebook, myspace,…). Social media is a interesting topic, especially in terms of User Experience. These platforms are driven by the users experiences. The best example here is the introduction of the like button by facebook; This like button ended in a rewarding system for presenting up the most interesting life on the web. Most social media platforms make use of this data by sell it to other companies. The system of social media could therefore be described as exchange of data for user experience.