Juggling Designs

After reading only the first 25 pages of the book entitled Experience Design by Nathan Shedroff, I have become lured to read the book all the way through. In a sense, I guess you could say that I want to finish the experience.
As I read, I came across a quote—and added to it my own phrase that seems to summarize one of many experience design themes. Of course, it should be noted that this is a notion I keep in mind when I design (yes, this was a thought of mine before I read it) and reading this text only furthered my belief.
“ 'All experiences are important, and…we can learn from them' no matter what they encompass.” (Shedroff 2-3)
And so my reading continued, as I came across many topics; one of the most important speaking volumes about what constitutes a good experience. Having no prior knowledge of experience composure, I found myself thinking about my design process, and I eventually came to the conclusion that my belief is that designs are either a huge success or a huge failure. But apparently many things structure a good experience, and so perhaps things aren’t as hit & miss as I thought they were. The most obvious of these include attraction—so to entice the view/consumer—and a conclusion—bringing the experience to a close with intentions of keeping the viewer/consumer happy and enlightened versus dazed and confused. Other experience musts listed include: Holding, drawing, and engaging the viewer, taking into account that designers and designs are competing for attention. Thus, “experiences can be deliberate” (Shedroff 4). Not only can they be deliberate, but they can also be built to make you look twice and question possibilities. Think about any design you’ve ever created—including the failures. What made your good designs keepers? And what made your failures so completely terrible? I would be more than willing to guess that the keepers possessed flare, something that makes your design different from all the rest…something that may potentially be the difference between success and failure in this industry. This isn’t to say that failures don’t have flare and good concepts behind them, but it does make you think about where a design may have gone wrong, doesn’t it?
For example, pages eight and nine in Experience Design talk about seduction and rethinking in the interface. On page eight we have a very nice write up on enhancement in the interface through changes. Then if you look to page nine, you see the exact same write up written in phonetics. At first glimpse, it looks like a totally different language, but if you look a little closer, you begin to notice the English broken up phonetically. I think this example does a great job of proving the point that a winning design will make you look at it twice. I think it also points out an interesting point on a personality change, as it allows the viewer to change the way they look at an interface.
So as I continued to read, I began to learn about the many types of experiences…and while there are not infinite types, there is an incredible amount of variety to be found. But finding things in common amongst designs may be easier than one may think…some of the similarities include: Activity, meaning, and success. These three similarities among designs also show us again that there is a large competitiveness throughout media.
And now back to experiences…Experiences play on our senses and give us a 3D view on things. The great example listed in the book was that of a Theme Park; a place where you run through emotions, engage in activity, find some meaning as you wander, and thus the park has successfully drawn you in to their experiences. This, in turn, may draw you back to the park sometime soon…for more business.
So what else is a 3D experience? How about Travel? Finding and/or seeing new things is very important in experience. I can relate to travel as a 3D experience because my father is a pilot for United Airlines, and from the various places he and I have traveled, we see many different things. Each of these things incorporates their own emotions, thus creating their own experience. It’s pretty cool stuff, actually. So I guess that makes travel is one of my favorites.
The last thing I want to talk about is value. Indeed, values are very important in experiences. Interpretation of one’s work can lead to a great success or a massive failure, and I have already come to see this in the Design Field (I strongly recommend you roam around this site!). Surely, our interpretations change as we grow older, and in turn, this makes me believe that creating a winning experience design for everyone is very hard; and may need to be specified to a single demographic. Values can make or break a design, and so…how hard is it in today’s media to create an experience that all can enjoy?
Great reading…I look forward to learning more on the topic.

This is a completely random post, but today was my second day at my new Graphic Design job. I work for a company now out of Shelton, CT called SignQuest, run by a man named Greg Datelle. His lead designer's name is Bill, but I don't know Bill's last name yet. Oh well. Actually, my professor from last semester, Steven Marcus, is the one who introduced me to Greg. Who would've thought that I'd end up with a job by the beginning of Sophomore year, huh? Well, so far we've just been moving into our new place, but already I am getting a feeling for how a design studio is run...of course, I haven't done any designing yet, but I am starting to understand the business side of things, which is just as important. Very cool to be working with real designers, and I can't wait to sit down and create some proofs myself.

Yep...this is my first post...and at this point there's not much to say.
Hopefully many of you will check back to see just how awesome this post will be.
Enjoy.