Some interesting findings in the article, Experience prototyping by Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri. The content and main objective of the paper is to explain the method of experience prototyping. The article becomes increasingly engaging as it digs deeper into what it really means.
As experience is something very dynamic and complex and interwoven with social setting, time, place and other factors. It becomes more sophisticated to grasp the term and sort out how to define it. Buchenau and Suri states that the look and feel of an product is what really is concrete experience of using an artifact. The experience is not only limited to that but can be seen as how the functions of an artifact serves in user’s life. From a design perspective this sounds complex enough, but at the same time very interesting. How and when does a product/system become “useless”, to whom (demographic) and why?
The writers continues to press the issue that the experience in the term “experience prototyping” is the method which allows the designers, clients or users to “experience it themselves instead of witnessing a demo or someone else’s experience”. An argument for understanding the experiential qualities is to subjectively experience it…
A point in why it has become important nowadays is that interactions and systems which is being designed are becoming increasingly complex. As designer a holistic approach is preferred as the artifact must take into account the whole experience and not just the part in which it acts. Not only will it become essential to ask: is this component working as it should? Does it give the experience and usability as it should? Rather questions should be framed: How does this environment feel when the component is present and working? How are the dynamics of the environment changing and how does it add to usability in the environment?
From a design perspective, the holistic approach becomes. naturally in our time, a more complex issue but a very necessary one. Designing sustainable and robust interactions and systems require a deeper learning of the whole. So by isolating individual components and adding them to the greater system without taking into the account of what the needs or interactions are within that system, are bound to perform bad or quickly become useless.
The writers are adding to the argument by summarizing that multiple disciplines are needed to cooperate in order to solve design problems of today. Each and everyone of the groups have different way of understanding and solving the issue. It demonstrates how complex the view of a system or an interaction has become and the magnitude of knowledge it requires to solve those problems.
To voice some issues there is in experience prototyping, one can say that the designer is being put into the situation of using something. Something that usually the designer is not expert in. This isn’t always reflected in the result of experience whereas a professional could use something much more efficiently and proficient whereas a novice wouldn’t really gain the full experience. The writers discuss this in the paper and as a solution, other stakeholders should also be included to share their domain of knowledge and experience in the design. Because in the end the design is to be used by other people than the designers themselves so it becomes a natural thing to include the “expert” group of people that really represent the true requirement of the interaction and design.
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