1 Introduction

1.1 Motivation

In recent years crucial changes concerning the expectation of users towards interactive products and their assessment of user product interactions can be observed. Besides traditional aspects like functionality and usability, emotional aspects are gaining in importance: How is a user experiencing a product? What is the user experiencing with the product? User Experience (UX) describes the individual expectation, cognition, evaluation and communication of a product interaction by the user [1]. When disregarding the prospective User Experience during the development of products even technically mature products can fail on market. But by purposefully designing positive experiences in product development it is possible to create potentials for exciting products and emotional customer loyalty.

User Experience Design (UXD) aims at creating products which enable exciting interactions, memorable moments and enjoyable stories [2]. This goal can be achieved by creating products which trigger emotions of the user [3] and satisfy customer needs  [4]. While UXD is a rather young discipline within product development other disciplines are traditionally focused on creating experiences (e.g. sports, film, gaming, etc.). There are great opportunities for profiting from those areas for designing the User Experience with technical products. This paper presents a research agenda towards this integration.

1.2 Initial Situation

Analyzing real development projects in industry, we observed that product developers often struggle with designing experiences. This is due to several reasons:

Focus on Technical and Economic Aspects. Product developments are mostly technology-driven. Products are optimized regarding technical and financial aspects. The user is mostly considered under ergonomic aspects and there are great potentials in using technological improvements to optimize the User Experience, and thus increase product value.

Accordingly Designed Product Development Processes. Processes are planned to analyze and solve problems concerning the aspects described before. It is a main challenge to include UX factors besides conventional aspects. Traditional approaches, like requirement lists, have to be enriched and supplemented with new methods and tools when designing inspiring User Experiences.

Competences Specified for These Goals. Furthermore, development teams are compiled accordingly, being experts in their field but finding it hard to design emotions. Required competences and roles on the way to UX have to be specified.

Other Disciplines Ahead of UXD. UXD addresses the described challenges by providing theoretical models for experiences and methods to keep the user in focus throughout the development process [1]. Yet, UXD is still facing great challenges when designing experiences in the field of product development, while other disciplines from the area of entertainment are traditionally oriented at and specialized on generating experiences. It is the very own core competence of these experience related disciplines to fascinate their “users”. Examples are people supporting their favorite sports team, or a person watching a movie immersing completely into a fictional world experiencing something special and telling it to friends afterwards.

Other disciplines are far ahead of product development concerning the design of experiences. These circumstances raise the question which is discussed in this paper. What aspects can UXD learn from experience oriented disciplines for designing successful products?

1.3 Goal

UXD aims at creating fascinating products and providing methods and tools on the way to these products. In this field we aim at enhancing traditional processes in product development with new approaches. The goal of the approach presented in this paper is the development of support for designing experiences with interactive products by learning from experience oriented disciplines. This main goal is divided into the following sub goals.

Identification of Relevant Disciplines. First of all, it is important to define criteria for disciplines to be looked at and accordingly identify relevant disciplines for further research.

Analysis and Comparison of Disciplines. We analyze the identified disciplines, extracting how experiences are described and developed compared to each other as well as compared to product development.

Development of Experience Model and Experience Requirements. Coming out of the analysis we develop a model for User Experience and transfer it to the design of technical products – defining requirements for experience products.

Integration into User Experience Design Process. Finally, we develop support for the design of User Experience. This support is anchored in a User Experience Design process.

2 Approach

Our approach is based on the question: What can UXD learn from experience oriented disciplines for designing successful products? In product development three areas of application for profiting from experience disciplines have been identified by systematically comparing potentials of the relevant domains with gaps in UXD: products, processes and people (see Fig. 1). In the following, the three areas are described and illustrated with an example – also highlighting challenges in each area.

Fig. 1.
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Framework of research approach

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2.1 Product

Example. It is the final of the football world cup 2014. Millions of people around the globe have followed the event for the last four weeks – experiencing joy, excitement, fear, etc. Now after the final win of Germany the crowd in the stadium, people at home or on the streets are celebrating with the winning team, others suffering with defeated Argentina or again others just following the spectacle, but all being fascinated and thrilled, experiencing something special.

What are the important aspects behind these experiences? It is possible to describe them as an adventure that is shaped by three factors [5] (Fig. 2): (1) experiencing “controlled danger” (e.g.: Is your favorite team going to lose and exit from the tournament?); (2) different forms of surprises (e.g.: When are the goals scored? How many? By whom?); (3) various modifications of the new and foreign (e.g.: Atmosphere, supporters, stadiums, participating teams, media, etc. are different every four years when the world cup takes place.). The criteria of newness, surprise and danger together lead to an increased experience of the moment, an escape from daily life and the experience of “flow”. Besides, aspects like the world cup history, prestige, expectations of supporters, connected emotions etc. can also play an important role and intensify the experience.

Fig. 2.
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Award ceremony of the FIFA world cup 2014 (© by Agência Brasil) and aspects of adventure experience in sports [5].

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Description. It is not the goal to create a second football world cup. Yet, we can learn a lot for User Experience Design by studying the characteristics of occurring experiences, such as the ones explained before. By analyzing “products” from specific experience oriented areas (e.g. sports event, sports activity, movie, computer game etc.) via observations, interviews and literature review we can derive important characteristics of experiences that emerge in these fields. We transfer these aspects to product development, defining requirements for the characteristics of User Experiences and providing patterns to purposefully design UX. Thus, product developers are supported, knowing which aspects to consider in experience design and being guided by successful examples from other disciplines.

Questions. When analyzing experiences in certain fields and transferring explanations to User Experience Design several questions occur: Can various experiences be unified in one model, defining the main requirements for User Experience? Which aspects of experiences in other areas can be transferred into technical products? Are experiences emerging in certain areas related to specific target groups and therefore limited in their transferability? Besides our main analysis we address these questions as well as challenges in the following categories as part of our research.

2.2 Process

Example. You enter a big hotel in the mountains. But it feels like entering a new world, a place you want to stay. The surrounding makes you experience the big hotel like a traditional cottage. Although the hotel is almost fully booked it does not seem there are many people around. It feels cozy and of high quality at the same time. You do not feel the daily rush. Every detail seems to fit – the wine bottles stored next to your table, the stony floor…

How is this experience designed? According to the model shown in Fig. 3 in tourism defining a theme (e.g. mountain cottage) is the first step towards an intended experience. Based on this theme the presentation concept is an instrument for strategically planning the holistic experience and adjusting different elements to each other (e.g. rooms arranged similar to traditional cottages). Within this concept attractions create various experience potentials (e.g. wine cellar) whereas the setting is the aesthetic instrument for designing the surrounding (e.g. light design). The visitors are analyzed enabling target group specific offerings. Visitors are deliberately guided in between attractions to avoid crowds of people at the same place.

Fig. 3.
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Wine Cellar at Angerer Alm (© by Angerer Alm) and tourism experience production model [6].

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Description. Not only the “products” differ in product development and experience oriented disciplines. Also the processes that produce these products and possibly lead to experiences are remarkably different. Product development processes are traditionally product oriented. Problems occur in maintaining initial experience ideas throughout the development process and accordingly designing consistent User Experiences [7]. In contrast, e.g. processes in tourism or film production processes have the explicit goal of and succeed in creating experiences. We analyze processes in the experience domains and combine advantages of approaches keeping the product in focus but integrating new elements to keep the story behind the product alive (e.g. presentation concept).

Questions. Challenges on the way of adapting processes from other disciplines to UXD are among others: To which degree are experiences in other areas designed systematically or rather are emerging randomly? Do adaptions affect the whole product development process or only certain development phases (e.g. idea generation)?

2.3 People

Example. A young man is playing a video game of the Indiana Jones series on his computer. He is absolutely fascinated by the interplay of several aspects: the thrilling story, the amazing sound, the great design and the convincing gameplay. Not recognizing the world around him at this moment, he is taking the role of the game character, experiencing an artificial adventure.

Which competencies are essential to design such a gaming experience? Figure 4 shows the team around the creative director who communicates the overall creative vision within the game development team and takes care that this vision is realized with every aspect of the game. He interacts with several team members with different backgrounds: production (producer), art (concept artist), design (lead designer, world builder, writer) and engineering (sound designer). The roles vary from team to team. One role is not necessarily performed by one person but each role brings in a specific expertise on the way to designing gaming experiences.

Fig. 4.
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Gamer immersing into fictional world (© by Laura Hordern) and team members in game development [8].

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Description. People involved in the design process are the third category that is concerned in our approach. By analyzing team compositions and established roles in experience oriented disciplines, we extract new roles to be introduced in UXD. Experts from other areas can also bring their expertise into development teams directly, generating ideas that are out of scope of traditional developers. For example a creative director or a film director could be integrated in an interdisciplinary UX team to keep the intended story behind a technical product. The right level of integrating experts from experience oriented disciplines into development teams has to be defined, finding a balance between challenges of diverse teams and improved creativity for potential UX innovations.

Questions. Concerning this category, it is important to analyze the following questions: Which existing roles in product development and User Experience Design [9] can be enhanced with aspects from other disciplines? Which new roles should be introduced? What is the reason for improved experience design when integrating people into design teams – participation of an expert from an experience oriented field or just the presence of someone who has the ability and right to think different?

2.4 Integration

The three categories are not analyzed completely separately. Aiming at the development of support on the way to UX, all models, methods etc. are integrated into a User Experience Design process: (1) the “product” as the target to enable positive UX at the end of the process, (2) the “process” building the framework for the way towards the target and providing support on this way and (3) “people” in the form of UX team roles realizing the product in the process. This work builds on a User Experience Design process (www.designingexperiences.org) that was developed in an interdisciplinary research project [9]. We aim at enhancing and adapting this process according to findings of the systematic approach explained in this paper.

3 Research Design

3.1 Disciplines

Potential disciplines which address a broad range of potential users and provide a great variety of experience potentials are gathered in a user survey and by literature review. We define criteria for selecting the areas to be analyzed. Relevant disciplines have to offer a certain “product” and should also address economic aspects. The second important criterion is the orientation towards experiences. These should be the aim in the specific fields. Areas of daily life where positive or negative experiences occur randomly (e.g. road traffic) are not considered. Also the transferability of characteristics into product development is a main criterion. So far we address sports, gaming industry, tourism, film industry, marketing, arts, music, experiential education and events management. The disciplines are ranked, promising the biggest impact on UXD in product development and offering a realistic extract for the research agenda.

3.2 Analysis

The Analysis can be divided into two parts – theoretical and practical investigation. By reviewing literature, we derive theoretical models and processes in experience focused disciplines. In addition, we interview experts which are deeply involved in the specific fields (e.g. sports psychologist, film director) revealing substantial insights. By this means we gather triggers for experiences (e.g. possibility to win or lose in sports) and theoretical models and approaches that exist for these specific experiences. On the other hand we analyze “products” from the specified areas (e.g. sports event, sports activity, movie etc.) and emerging experiences by observations as well as by interviewing involved persons. Considering the growing popularity and evidence base for design thinking approaches much can be learned from engaging with people committed to a certain discipline (e.g. game players, sports enthusiasts and film connoisseurs) when attempting to construct a new framework for effective User Experience Design.

3.3 Demand

With our approach we want to overcome existing shortcomings in User Experience Design. Therefore, we analyze the status quo in research and industry of product development concerning the design of UX. Finding and addressing requirements of UX theory and needs of industry partners we aim at building our approach on a profound basis and providing useful support. Industry partners assess the potentials of new ideas and various sources are used to evaluate new approaches, methods and processes.

3.4 Background

Supporting our approach, we look at basics of some specific fields, besides UX and general psychological background of experiences. The field of bio-inspired design is analyzed, revealing challenges to be faced when integrating ideas and approaches from another discipline into the field of product development. Design Thinking provides the background for integrating “users” of other disciplines into our analysis. Gamification is examined as an approach which already introduces gaming elements into technical products.

3.5 Development of Support

Ultimately support for the conscious design of UX is developed regarding the three categories: products, processes and people. Therefore, we compare approaches from the different disciplines and extract main findings. Analyzed mechanisms are transformed into patterns to be used in product development, supporting designers in purposefully creating experience products: a requirements model and according checklists for experience products, a process for purposefully designing these products supplemented with necessary methods and specifications of roles needed on this way. Finally, models and methods have to be presented and communicated in an understandable and appealing way for developers (e.g. integrating experience examples from the original discipline and linking them to technical application).

4 Conclusion

While User Experience Design is a rather young discipline within product development other disciplines are traditionally focused on creating experiences. The originality of the approach is the systematic analysis of experience related disciplines to extract concrete recommendations, guidelines and design patterns for UXD. It aims at the creation of support for product designers. Demand has been identified in research and industry regarding three categories – being optimized concerning technical implementation (products), systematic approaches (processes) and engineering competences (people) but requiring external input to create inspiring experience products. We want to enhance existing approaches in UXD with identified and specified mechanisms of designing experiences and evaluate these new methods and tools in student projects at university and real development projects in industry.