A strategy to support Experience Design process: the principle of Accordance

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A strategy to support Experience Design process: the principle of Accordance a

a

Serena Camere & Monica Bordegoni a

Dipartimento di Meccanica, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy Published online: 30 Apr 2015.

Click for updates To cite this article: Serena Camere & Monica Bordegoni (2015) A strategy to support Experience Design process: the principle of Accordance, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 16:4, 347-365, DOI: 10.1080/1463922X.2015.1014069 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1463922X.2015.1014069

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Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2015 Vol. 16, No. 4, 347 365, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1463922X.2015.1014069

A strategy to support Experience Design process: the principle of Accordance Serena Camere* and Monica Bordegoni Dipartimento di Meccanica, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

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(Received 31 October 2014; accepted 28 January 2015) Experience Design gained a lot of attention from both academic and professional research. The state of the art covers the theoretical notions of User Experience and provides designer with step-by-step methodologies. Another great amount of references addresses some specific moments of the design process. While being specific and extensive on these topics, literature lacks in explaining how to move from the abstract level of Experience to the pragmatic choice of product features. Designers who intentionally aim at creating products able to elicit specific meaningful experiences can benefit from the introduction of a methodological tool that supports them through the Experience-driven design process. The final goal of the tool is to help designers in visualising and deconstructing the Experience they wish to recreate in the product, into a set of sensory features. The article introduces a ‘working principle’, a strategy to fulfil the Experience Design process, considering some fundamental scientific resources. On these bases, we will present a first draft of the tool and narrate the results of a pilot validation study with designers. The paper ends with an exploration of future developments and possible directions of research in the Experience Design domain. Keywords: experience design; accordance; experience map; design methodology; design thinking

1. Introduction In the last 10 years, Experience Design has been evolved into an established discipline. Paying specific attention to the subtle qualities and meanings of products, Experience Design focuses on the intangible aspects of Human Product interaction. From seminal studies on usability and ergonomics, design research shifted its attention towards a broader understanding of users’ preferences, which are ultimately affected by several factors. Depicting all the aspects concerning User Experience, and in general how people perceive products, has been the core of several scientific studies since Norman’s groundwork (2013). These studies paved the way to develop new methodologies supporting designers in the Experience-driven design process, with different approaches (Forlizzi and Battarbee 2004). The eagerness to adopt these methodologies in both scientific research and professional practice can be explained by several reasons. First, understanding how (positive) experiences develop in Human Product interaction could help designers in creating products that elicit those experiences. Second, the knowledge generated can additionally spark new ideas to innovate and design new meaningful products. Third, designers’ and *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis

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users’ perspectives are different, in spite of designers’ attempts to empathise with people. De Bono explains: ‘it is always useful to evaluate new ideas with little enthusiasm coming from users. Designers always think that users will be enthusiastic of a new idea as its creators are: yet, this never happens’ (De Bono 1971). In a market constantly overwhelmed by new products, companies need to develop new strategies to differentiate from competitors and gain the preferences of consumers (Spence and Gallace 2011). A good understanding of customers’ needs is essential to avoid potential failures: some choices may appear the most appropriate according to the Design Team, but they can reveal as tremendous mistakes when the product enters the market. An example is the unsuccessful story of Alixir collection of ‘functional food’ promoted by the Barilla Company, as retrieved on several blogs. Alixir was launched in Italy as the new line of healthy food, specifically thought for a target of wealthy, conscious and middle-aged consumers. As soon as they entered the market, the line faced an unexpected failure, so that within few months the company withdrew all the products. One of the most critical choices made was the use of total, shiny black for the product packaging. The Design Team explained that black had been chosen for its minimal and elegant appeal. Yet, this choice turned out to be inappropriate, probably because in the Italian culture black is strongly associated with death and mourn. A total-black surface on a food packaging that is supposed to be healthy generates suspicion and doubts. In conclusion, Alixir packaging was a mistake that could have been avoided by a better understanding of users’ perspective and of the market context. Experience Design moved from initial studies on the theoretical understanding of human experiences in relation to product design towards the establishment of methods that help designers willing to elicit specific experiences. As a consequence, the literature provides designers with solid models of human experiences (Crilly, Moultrie, and Clarkson 2004) and step-by-step methodologies (Hekkert and van Dijk 2011; Schifferstein 2011). A great amount of references addresses instead more specific moments of the design process, such as the selection of materials (Sonneveld and Schifferstein 2008; Karana, Hekkert, and Kandachar 2009) or the users’ test (Gatti, Bordegoni, and Camere 2014; Desmet 2002). Somehow, while being specific and extensive on these topics, the literature lacks in explaining how to move from the abstract level of Experience to the pragmatic choice of product features. How do designers give shape to concepts? How do they deal with open, complex visions and translate them into a welldefined idea? This paper presents an overview of Experience Design theories, showing how literature widely explains the theoretical notions of Experience and the final steps of the design process, while it lacks support in visualising and deconstructing the Experience. To answer the questions presented above, we will refer to theories of design thinking, relating them to notions of Experience Design and Product Semantics. We will introduce a ‘working principle’ to describe the process of translation of the Experience into a formalised idea. On the basis of this principle, we will present a tool to support the visualisation and deconstruction phase in the Experience-driven design process. Furthermore, we will present the results of a preliminary test with designers. Eventually, we will discuss the effect of the tool on the design process and future developments of this work. 2. A view on Experience Design The fascination evoked by the objects that surround us in our everyday life is not a new topic; it is deeply rooted in aesthetics studies. The rise and popularity of what is nowadays

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called design, however, pushed scientists, companies and designers themselves to demystify and better understand how products affect our lives. The way people interact with artefacts influences the Experience itself and can elicit different affective reactions. Experience Design pays particular attention to the study of Human Product interaction with the ultimate goal of meeting people’s needs, desires and expectations. Desmet and Hekkert (2007) provide a model describing three different levels of Product Experience: aesthetic experience, emotional experience and experience of meaning. At aesthetic level, they identify the product’s ability to please people’s senses; at emotional level, products are considered for their capacity of inducing affective responses, belonging to different categories (disgust, fear, love, boredom, joy, etc.). The experience of a meaning takes into account the user’s cognitive response, associating it to subjective interpretations, memories and cultural facts. The model resembles Crilly, Moultrie, and Clarkson’s (2004), although this focuses on User Experience related to Human Computer interaction. They distinguished between aesthetic impression, semantic interpretation and symbolic association. In this paper, we adapted Crilly Moultrie, and Clarkson’s model to outline the communication system between the subject and the object (Figure 1). Communication takes place during an event (a moment) when object properties transmit a message to the subject’s senses. Subject and object are seen as separate entities, both placed in a specific context, which influences the interaction according to the place, the culture and even the time occurring. The artefact (object) is characterised by aesthetic and symbolic qualities, which corresponds to Desmet and Hekkert’s definition (2007), as well as by functional qualities, which are more closely related to the ability of the product of satisfying its purpose. The person (subject of the communication) is indeed influenced in

Figure 1. Model of User Experience. Adapted from Crilly, Moultrie, and Clarkson (2004) andSchifferstein and Hekkert (2008).

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his/her response by his/her individuality, the affective states elicited at the moment of interaction (Desmet 2002) and finally by the needs he/she wishes to satisfy. When the event occurs, the object and the subject interact in a communication modality that can be exploited by the Design Team to convey a message to users. We define Design Team as the people actively working in the product development, usually identified by marketing experts, product designers and engineering designers. We wish to point out that a Design Team, especially during recent years, can benefit from rich contributions by several disciplines, so that in some projects psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, bio-medics and others can actively collaborate with designers (product designers) and engineers (engineering designers). In this paper, we decided to maintain a more traditional model to further focus on the role of the following three actors, i.e. marketing, design and engineering experts. Basing on this model, Experience Design can be defined as the process of design driven by the experience we want people to feel while interacting with an object. All the subsequent choices and steps of the design process will aim at fulfilling that specific experience. Moreover, the final goal of creating meaningful experiences (Hassenzahl et al. 2013) leads to a greater chance of achieving innovation. Indeed, among the different theories of innovation, Verganti (2006) distinguished among different drivers of innovation: a market-pull for Incremental Innovation, a technology-push and a design-driven approach for Radical Innovation (Figure 2(a)). Incremental Innovation refers to improvements within a given frame of solutions (i.e. improving the design of something already existing), while Radical Innovation carries a change of frame (i.e. creating something that is brand new). Radical Innovation comes about through generation of new meaning and changes in technology, not only by means of technical improvement (Norman and Verganti 2014). The Innovation Matrix presented by the design company IDEO (2010) similarly differentiates between incremental, evolutionary and revolutionary innovation (Figure 2(b)), where the last one generates disruptive solutions able to tackle both new users and new offerings.

Figure 2. (a) Drivers of Innovation. Adapted from Verganti (2006). (b) Innovation Matrix. Adapted from IDEO (2010).

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The variety of approaches in the Experience Design domain reflects the great number of existing tools, which have been developed to connect users’ preferences and perceptions to the design of products. These methods follow a User-centred approach (Forlizzi and Battarbee 2004). They all include users in the process of product development, in order to evaluate the User Experience and to subsequently modify the product design. This can be done at different stages of the product development process: the sooner, the better it can affect the product design (Folkestad and Johnson 2002). The willingness to include users in the Experience-driven design process echoes the principles of Participatory Design. Recognising in people powerful sources of inspiration, Participatory Design involves users at the very beginning of the design process (Sanders and Stappers 2008). To do so, it applies various design prototyping techniques such as storyboards, scenarios, sketches and mock-ups that are also common in Experience Design. These tools guide the user through small steps to construct and express more profound levels of knowledge (Visser et al. 2005). Starting from the surface, it is possible to dig deeper into people’s tacit and latent needs through generative techniques. In conclusion, both Participatory Design and Experience Design pay attention to users affective and cognitive responses to meet their expectations and increase the value of design actions. A great number of Experience Design methodologies describe how to go through the design process with an Experience-driven perspective. Hekkert and Van Dijk (2011) propose the Vision in Product Design (ViP) to start with more abstract concepts, arising from the context, then to look at the interaction with the product and finally to the product itself. The process guides the designer in outlining a ‘vision’, a clear statement of what the product will offer to people. This must be translated into interaction qualities, to describe how the product will offer a certain experience to people (e.g., the product must express playfulness, elegance and safety). These interaction qualities serve as a baseline to explore and select product character and, finally, product properties. In a similar way, the MultiSensory Design (Schifferstein 2011) approach reports an eight-step framework to help designers who intentionally aim at creating a specific experience for people. It focuses on how to convey a message through different sensory modalities and their contribution to the overall experience. Hassenzahl (Hassenzahl 2005, 2010) extensively investigates the concepts and notions of Experience, relating it to a list of human psychological needs and using them to sparkle inspirations. While all these approaches carefully examine the theoretical concepts and provide designers with guidelines, they do not include any specific tool: they suggest the use of mind maps, storyboards, mock-ups, etc. Meanwhile, other sources in literature deal with more precise moments of the design process, as for instance the selection of the material. Karana, Hekkert, and Kandachar (2009) developed a comprehensive tool to select materials according to the meaning that the designer wishes to convey in a product. Others (Gatti, Bordegoni, and Camere 2014) address instead the sensory optimisation phase; Cila (2013) focuses on how to integrate metaphors in the product as a strategy to convey messages. Desmet’s (2002) framework is useful to depict users’ emotional reactions towards products, not only as a validation tool but also to understand emotion appraisal patterns and use them to stimulate idea generation. These examples show how the literature faces on the one hand the theory of Experience-driven design methodology without providing any definite tool, while on the other hand other sources concentrate on very specific moments of the design process. This lack can be partially explained because mood boards, storyboards and mind maps are significantly rooted in the design practice, as well as designers usually prefer to build their own ‘tool kit’ according to each project. Yet, we argue that these motivations can be

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considered just as useful information to keep in mind in developing this study. Therefore, this study proposes a first draft of a comprehensive tool to support designers in visualising and deconstructing the vision (i.e. the Experience), to develop the idea, to identify the product character and finally, to select the appropriate product properties.

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3. The principle of Accordance The Experience-driven process starts with the definition of what is called a vision, which is the personal and subjective view of the designer into the design project, the inspiration that guides him through all the steps of the design process. It can sparkle several ideas and can be declined differently. It is, finally, the result of the framing activity. This definition holds onto both the notion of ‘statement’ by Hekkert and Van Dijk (2011) and the concept of ‘frames’ by Dorst (2011). In the ViP process, a statement typically defines what you want to offer people, within the established context. The statement ‘shows where the process is going, and what the end goal will be’ (Hekkert and van Dijk 2011, 156). Meanwhile, Dorst (2011) claims that ‘framing is the term commonly used (. . .) for the creation of a standpoint from which problematic situation can be tackled’ (525). Although frames are often mistaken with simple metaphors, they are in fact complex notions that include a specific set of values. Dorst compares frames to the phenomenological concept of themes, which are essentially sense-making tools. The definition of frames is an important activity for designers, because it influences all the subsequent choices during the product development. Yet, it is largely considered as an informal activity. Designers find this activity particularly useful to get the ‘richness of the problem area’ (Dorst 2011, 528). A frame, according to the values it has to communicate, refers to a specific imaginary of expressive qualities. These qualities are declined coherently to the design frame within the product development. Another aspect that should be pointed out is related to the influence of the designer’s expertise in managing the Experience-driven process. If students and novice designers seem to randomly generate answers for both the ‘how’ and the ‘what’, then experienced designers tend to have much more effective strategies to tackle the creative challenge (Dorst 2011; Sonneveld and Schifferstein 2008; Cila 2013). Moreover, they usually look for more abstract concepts at the beginning of the process (‘I want to express a sense of care for clothes as if they were hand-washed with this laundry machine’), while students usually go for basic levels (‘I want the product to give people a sense of elegance’). This issue enhances the value and the need of a comprehensive tool out of education scopes. Indeed, the ability of the designer to achieve a higher level of visioning, his/her sensitivity for the different aspects of Product Experience is something that must be trained practically. How do designers move from the Experience level to the product level? How can we guide and support them throughout the process? Is it possible to visually deconstruct the vision? Is there a principle that designers follow to decline a vision into product features? To answer these questions, we wish to refer to some notions of Product Semantics. Products have a meaning and a language they speak with, in form of product attributes (Krippendorff 2004). Krippendorff started from these assumptions to formulate the notion of Product Semantics. He defines Semantics as ‘a systematic inquiry into how people attribute meanings to artefacts and interact with them accordingly’ and ‘a vocabulary and methodology for designing artefacts in view of the meanings they could acquire for their users and the communities of their stakeholders’ (Krippendorff and Butter 1989). The second definition addresses a possible vocabulary made of sensory qualities, i.e.

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product features, through which products express a particular meaning. Similarly, Hassenzahl (2004) refers to product descriptors as a range of features and attributes that equally contribute to communicate the intended product. Crilly, Moultrie, and Clarkson (2004) operate a distinction between Product Semantics and symbolic association, differentiating what the product communicates about itself (such as functions, limits and affordance) from what it tells about the external world (the user, the socio-cultural context, etc.). Although it is important to point out this difference, this study chooses to follow Krippendorff’s definition of Product Semantics that sees meaning as something so interrelated that cannot be separated by the culture or by the interaction itself (Krippendorff and Butter 2008). Peirce defined abduction as the form of reasoning that best describes design thinking (Roozenburg and Eekels 1995). In abduction, the challenge is to figure out what and how to create something that leads to the aspired value we want to communicate with the product. In the Experience-driven process, the vision is the what; the how is the strategy chosen by the designer to embody the what in the artefact (i.e. the something). The several multisensory dimensions return a specific overall expression, which ultimately help to communicate the what. On this basis, we formulate the principle of Accordance, which can be used to manage all the steps of the Experience-driven design process and decline a vision into an expression and subsequently, into product features. Accordance is essentially a principle of congruence that is followed by designers in declining all the product features through a chosen vision. The vision, as Dorst’s concept of frames, evokes a specific imaginary in the mind of the designer; even more when the expression is picked, the association with visual, tactual and more in general, multisensory properties starts to become very precise. It is not only a matter of choices according to the designer’s subjective taste; it expresses the appropriateness of the product qualities according to the intended vision. It may be useful to provide now an example showing what we mean for vision, strategy, expression and sensory qualities, and how they can be related through the principle of Accordance. Let us consider the Pulse washing machine by Deepdesign (Figure 3). The research is part of the ‘Project F: fabric care futures’ by Whirlpool, carried out in 2000. The design studio elaborated the concept willing to express a sensation of care for clothes in the laundry machine, i.e. the feeling of having your clothes washed as gently as if they were hand-washed. In this case, the vision is ‘to communicate the feeling of care of clothes, as if they were hand-washed’ (Morozzi, Mangiarotti and Bazzicalupo 2010). The strategy chosen by Deepdesign studio was to embody the metaphor of a uterus within the product. Indeed, as a mother’s womb, the product embraces the clothes and washes them smoothly, gently and softly, producing a washing cycle similar to hand gestures. The expression of the product is characterised by a soft, textured and opaque appearance, and the multisensory product features (even the sound of the product had been designed to match the expression) contribute to the overall experience. Yet, Accordance is not a univocal principle, nor it regards only designers. Defining the Design Team as the people actively working in the product development, we wish to understand if each member of the Design Team applies the same criterion. Having a closer look at the Design Team, marketing experts and designers can be both seen as familiar to design thinking, although from different perspectives. Marketing experts express a project frame with metaphors, mainly in the form of linguistic expressions. Designers usually integrate these with abstract concepts (i.e. the vision) and they work with a visual approach, through the use of sketches, inspirational images, mood boards, mock-ups, etc. Engineering designers traditionally suffer from a difficulty in translating

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Figure 3. Concept ‘Pulse’, washing machine, Deepdesign for Whirlpool, 2001. Source: http:// www.deepdesign.it/portfolios/pulse_project-f. Accessed on 15 October.

these apparently vague and ambiguous metaphors into product characteristics. We would like to point out that, due to representation issues, this paper consider marketing, design and engineering skills as separated entities. Even if during recent years these disciplines have merged increasingly, design, engineering and marketing experts can still experience some difficulties in communicating with each other. Their backgrounds are so different that members simply do not share the same specific language (Rasoulifar, Eckert, and Prudhomme 2014). Because of such different perspectives, we can define three categories of Accordance, which correspond to each point of view. Marketing experts follow a principle of Accordance, which is different from designers’ and engineers’. They look for Placement Accordance: a product must be coherent to its brand vision, specific for a target and distinguished by competitors. Apple’s iPhone is a perfect example of Placement Accordance, where every single detail gives the feeling of high-tech, luxury and outstanding quality that corresponds exactly to the Apple marketing strategy. Engineers and R&D departments follow instead a principle of Technical Accordance, where all the functional and technological parameters must be coherent to each other. Proper examples are mechanical instruments, such as the Planetarium of Milan star projector, where all the parts are technically and functionally coherent to each other. Designers, ultimately, apply a Semantic Accordance approach: once the Vision has been defined, the product must express a specific character. In order to make it explicit, product features and attributes must be declined according to their semantic meaning. The Bombino refrigerator by Smeg, for example, has been inspired by an iconic imaginary of the 1960s: all the product features communicate a vintage appeal, recalling the soft and rounded shapes typical of the 1960s style (Figure 4).

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Figure 4. Examples of Placement, Technical and Semantic Accordances.

From these examples, we can understand that there is a common principle of Accordance among Design Team members. However, while Placement and Semantic Accordances share the metaphoric attitude and an intrinsic qualitative nature, Technical Accordance refers to pragmatic and quantitative parameters. These differences generate the difficulties mentioned above. 3.1. Accordance in design methodology In order to further explain the concept of Accordance and how it can affect the design methodology, it is necessary to contextualise it in the product development process (Figure 5). After the company launches the project Brief (1) and the limitations are defined (2), the Design Team proceeds in defining a vision that will guide all the subsequent stages of the project. During the Idea Development phase (3), the vision is deconstructed into a set of sensory qualities and inspirations that describes it. Usually, designers perform this step through mood boards and style boards. At this point, a prototype (either physical or virtual) is built, in order to proceed with users’ test aiming at assessing users’ preferences. This is the moment when members of the Design Team experience the greater difficulty in understanding each other: the idea is still not formalised; yet, the variables of the final product must be tested with users. On the basis of what stated above, the present research framework introduces a tool to support Design Team members in this phase: the Experience Map.

Figure 5. Design process.

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4. The tool: the Experience Map The tool here presented is called ‘Experience Map’. It has been designed to answer different needs that emerged from the theoretical background presented in the paper. More specifically, it aims at supporting designers in visualising and deconstructing the vision into an expression and then into a set of product properties. The tool asks designers to rate the relevance of each sensory feature in contributing to the overall expression of the vision. We argue that rating the importance of a sensory quality from 1 to 5 according to the expression of the vision can facilitate the communication between members of the Design Team. The map asks designers to translate the vision, made of visual and linguistic metaphors, into a first categorisation in semi-quantitative parameters. Doing that, the tool can enhance designers’ awareness of the Experience-driven design process, thereby bringing more confidence in subsequent projects. Moreover, it will make the moment of ‘translation’ of the vision into sensory qualities less deliberate (but still free), by supporting designers with a visual approach. Finally, as we mentioned before, a tool supporting Experience Design is considerably at need when it comes to design education. Students and novice designers may experience some difficulties in translating a vision into an expression and sensory properties. They need to train their sensitivity to the multisensory expression of the vision. The tool can fulfil this need by providing guidance throughout the Experience-driven design process. Another side effect provided by the Experience Map comes along with the deconstruction of the vision into a set of sensory features. Indeed, being able to visualise the vision means to make the Prototyping phase more efficient, less time consuming and deliberate. During the Prototyping phase, and especially for what concerns digital mockups, it is a common practice to select many variables for each sensory quality. Should the product have a soft and warm texture? Or should it feel rigid and cold? With digital mock-ups, almost endless possibilities are available. During recent years, the possibility of creating interactive Virtual Prototypes (iVPs) has fuelled the practice of digital representations with a multisensory approach. interactive Virtual Prototyping emerged then as an evaluation methodology for the product concept phase (Bordegoni 2011). iVPs can be used either to verify the behaviour of a designed product or to evaluate possible variations in interaction experiences. In this way, experience is assessed by understanding users’ preferences. In both cases, iVPs increase their potential if used in a continuous design-validation loop, where users’ opinions directly influence product design. iVPs are significantly increasing their realism and fidelity, through the setting of rich multimodal environments that stimulate different sensory channels. iVPs offer the great opportunity to change quickly and without effective costs the product features, such as the shape, the colour, the sound and other dynamic properties (such as the force feedback of interactive components, etc). In addition, it is possible to measure the users’ response to these changes by combining iVPs with users’ preference evaluation methods (Ferrise et al. 2011). However, this system offers a limitless variability: product features can get any possible value or configuration, which of course is neither practically feasible nor measurable with users. As a consequence, a major question for iVP methodology is to understand if (and how) it is possible to set the range of variables to be tested. We propose the principle of Accordance and the Experience Map as an effective approach to tackle this issue. The Experience Map includes two layers: the first involves a more qualitative approach (providing space to build a mood board with keywords), while the second asks for a quantitative evaluation of each attribute belonging to different sensory modalities.

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Figure 6. The Experience Map.

Looking at the map in Figure 6, we can see that the Experience Map is made up of different elements. First of all, it presents two hemispheres: the upper part includes intrinsic properties (i.e. the product physicality), while the bottom sector addresses extrinsic properties (i.e. related to the Human Product interaction). Considering the external, and more qualitative circles of the Experience Map, designers can find slots to insert inspirational images and keywords that explore the vision as they stated it. Indeed, as designers largely work with visual content, this layer should help them in visualising the vision through images and words. Moving to the internal circles of the Map, we can find a list of features placed adopting a radar-graph layout. These features are grouped under the respective attribute to which they belong. As in Hassenzahl’s (2004) notion of product descriptors, we suggest that each sensory feature contribute to the product appearance by communicating a certain attribute, which ultimately gives back the overall character of the product. For both hemispheres, different sensory features are grouped into sensory attributes. These features can be rated from 1 to 5, following a standard rating scale (from 1 to 5 1: less relevant;

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5: more relevant; [see, for example: Likert 1932]). The central part of the Experience Map supports designers in the deconstruction of the vision into a set of sensory features. As a whole, the Experience Map is a tool that comprises qualitative methods (mood boards and keywords) visually connecting them with a quantitative evaluation of sensory features. 4.1. Character, properties, attributes and features The sensory features included in the Experience Map have been selected through literature review. They are all part of similar lists, which had been tested in the cited studies (Table 1). In the present research, basing on these sources, we decided not to undertake a validation concerning the list of sensory features. We argue that the main focus needs to stay on the tool itself, its acceptability and usability within the design process. The tool, indeed, is here presented as first version, which is currently under validation and refinement. A validation of the list of sensory features could be possible and it may be integrated in the near future. However, the tool aims at providing designers with guidance in the deconstruction of the vision; leaving room to designer’s personal interpretation of the tool can be useful to make the Map more flexible to different design cases. This also includes possible changes (additions or removals) in the list of sensory features. Therefore, carrying out a complete validation of the list of terms could result in a pointless (yet time-consuming) activity. As said before, we divided the Experience Map (see Figure 6) into two hemispheres. The upper hemisphere addresses the product’s intrinsic properties, i.e. features that are related to product’s static appearance. They include visual, tactual, olfactory and shaping attributes (Table 1). While the first three categories are clearly related to standard sensory modalities, the last one comprises details in the shape of the product, which contribute significantly to the intended product character. Note that taste attributes were excluded because they can be considered as less relevant sensory modalities in respect to the design process. Sound is instead included and considered for its interaction-related properties. Therefore, the Experience Map lists auditory attributes in the extrinsic properties hemisphere. This part gathers those (dynamic) properties reacting to the users’ interaction with the product: for example, a light signal or an alarm. This differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of the product can also be found in literature. While the static appearance of the product conveys symbolic meanings and accordances and is investigated by Product Semantics, with the rise of information technology, another layer of dynamic communication could be embodied in the object (Colombo and Rampino 2013). The dynamic properties in the Experience Map include auditory, haptic and visual attributes. As in the case of taste and sound static features, the olfactory modality has not been taken into account in the extrinsic properties. We will further discuss this choice in relation to the test outcomes. 5. Testing the Experience Map In this section, we present a pilot study aimed at assessing designers’ feedback on the Experience Map. We ran a qualitative test in reverse modality to get first insights from designers’ perspective on the usability and comprehensibility of the tool. Instead of asking participants to use the tool to represent a vision, they were requested to describe some objects through the Map. The process focused on a reverse deconstruction: looking at the sensory features of the product, designers should grasp the product expression and the

Colombo and Rampino (2013)

Camere and Bordegoni (2014)

Malnar and Vodvarka (2004)

Karana, Hekkert, and Kandachar (2009)

Source

properties

Softness Roughness Flexibility Weight Warmth

Tactual

Table 1. Product features selected for the Experience Map.

Acceptability Pervasiveness Intensity

Perfumed

Olfactory

Modularity Organic Rounding Textured

Shaping

Intrinsic

Colour contrast Colourfulness Colour intensity Opacity Glossiness

Visual

Visual

Colour change Shape change Light signal Opacity change

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Vibration Elasticity Ductility Strength

Haptic

Extrinsic

Loudness Sharpness Roughness

Auditory

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Figure 7. The Experience Map prepared for the tests.

vision behind the product. In this test, the Experience Map has been integrated with two other tools taken from literature (Figure 7): the Innovation Matrix (IDEO 2010) and the Interaction Vocabulary (Lenz, Diefenbach, and Hassenzahl 2013). The latter, in particular, provides a similar approach to the Experience Map. It focuses on the description of the interaction through semantic differentials describing the product character, while the Experience Map analyses the product features. The Interaction Vocabulary was added as comparison term for evaluating possible difficulties in using the Experience Map. The test was run with 10 participants, aged 24 50, 4 males and 6 females, all of them coming from the design practice. As mentioned before, the level of expertise could largely influence the approach to Experience-driven design process. Participants were then selected considering their design skills, so as to cover a sufficiently widespread sample. They were two MSc students, three junior designers, three senior designers and two expert designers (15C years of professional experience). Some of them are especially keen on technical aspects of product design, some others prefer the creative stage of the process, and some others have interest in aesthetics and styling issues. The products to be shown in the test were picked on the basis of their sensory features and their expressive character. They include a toaster with the 1960s-like style; an ergonomic and playful pen; an innovative scent dispenser made of cardboard; and a smartphone. The participants were asked to perform several tasks: (1) evaluate all the product features through the Experience Map, rating them from 1 to 5, (2) define keywords that describe the product character, (3) define the underlying product vision, (4) evaluate the product with the Interaction Vocabulary and (5) place the product grade of innovation within the Innovation Matrix. While performing the tasks, they were encouraged to think aloud, in order to take note of possible insights. At the end of the testing session, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire, evaluating the Experience Map for its visual

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clarity, consistency, accuracy, usability and their satisfaction when using the map. Some open questions were also provided at the end of the questionnaire.

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6. Discussion While running the tests, some issues emerged immediately. Some of the terms describing the product features were not clearly understood. Almost all the participants reported some troubles in understanding these features: ductility (extrinsic > haptic), roughness (extrinsic > auditory), opacity change (extrinsic > visual) and warmth (intrinsic > tactual). While the last two were not understood, due to linguistic misleads (participants were all English-speaking but only one was English-native), the former two were instead harsh to be grasped even when translated. On an overall level, participants described the map as very clear, consistent, accurate and usable. Interestingly, even though they were not informed about the real goal of the Experience Map, most of them stated that the tool seemed more appropriate for other phases of the design process. They specified that they would rather benefit from the tool at the moment of idea generation. All of them reported satisfaction in using it, and they affirmed the map would fit well into their average design process. Other meaningful insights were the following.  Accuracy seemed to be satisfactory, even though some parameters were found to be missing. For example, most of the participants (8/10) felt the lack of smell attributes within extrinsic properties. We previously discussed that the main goal of this study was not to validate the list of features. Yet, a whole category of attributes was found to be missing in this case.  The evaluation scale has been set from 1 to 5, as in standard rating scales. However, probably because the Map layout recalls radar graphs, participants (6/10) reported the need of the ‘zero’ value, in order to define the features that are not relevant in deconstructing the object.  Some participants (4/10) asked for a greater visual clarity in clustering the features through their attribute belonging. In Figure 8, we can see the resulting map of five participants for the description of one object (the toaster, on the left). 7. Future developments and conclusions This article presented a theoretical framework to undertake Experience-driven design process. It proposed a strategy to support the translation of the Experience (vision) into an expression and then into a set of sensory features. We introduced a ‘working principle’, namely the principle of Accordance, to explain some critical steps in the design process. Furthermore, we developed a tool, the Experience Map, whose purpose is to support designers in the vision translation and deconstruction. Other goals of the tool are (1) to facilitate the communication between members of the Design Team, (2) to increase designers’ awareness of the process, (3) to make the vision deconstruction less deliberate, (4) to train students’ and novice designers’ sensitivity, and (5) to support the definition and creation of iVPs and the Prototyping phase in general. The tool must be considered as a first draft that can be further implemented according to the pilot study results. In this article, we have illustrated the results of a preliminary qualitative test with a group of 10 designers. The study demonstrated a general consensus towards the Experience Map. It

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Figure 8. Results of five participants.

answered the two main goals of tests, i.e. to assert the acceptability of the test within the designers’ perspective, and the usability of the Map. Participants were found to be friendly with the use of the tool. Yet, some due refinements emerged from the results: first, the clarity of the tool would benefit from a vocabulary more based on the psychological perception instead of technical terms. The rating scale for each sensory feature should be corrected from 0 to 5. Moreover, reflecting on the designers’ approach to the tool, it would be interesting to expand the room for interpretation left in the tool, for example indicating the sensory features as suggestions, or leaving space to insert new terms according to the designers’ sensitivity. This would increase the chances of having the tool also adopted by expert designers, whose skills are more definite. Other issues that will be addressed in the next future regard the further validation of the tool. Until now, we have focused on the usability and acceptability of the tool; however, its implementation as a support for visualising and deconstructing the vision should be tested by means of a workshop. During this, we will consider if the tool actually facilitates the translation of the Experience into sensory qualities. Another validation phase

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could address the vocabulary of the Map, to add scientific strength to the tool. Further developments regarding the glossary adopted will be the correlation between sensory features and technical parameters. This delicate step can actually make the Experience Map a bridge between design thinking and technical reasoning. All the features should then find correspondences in quantitative parameters that can be used to set iVPs testing. The value ranked (from 0 to 5) by the designer should match a range of values in technical parameters. In this way, the whole process of interactive Virtual Prototyping will be more effective and easy to manage and the problem of the limitless variability in interactive Virtual Prototyping would be solved. On an overall level, we believe that this framework is a solid base to answer some unsolved issues in the Experience-driven design process. Compared to what is already present in the literature, the Experience Map offers a methodological approach, which can be useful to guide the designer through the steps of visualisation and deconstruction. In the next future, we wish to make this aspect more evident, as well as to improve the flexibility of the tool. In this way, the Experience Map will support design thinking and creativity for the creation of rich, multisensory experiences elicited by a product.

About the authors Serena Camere is currently a PhD student in Experience Design at Politecnico di Milano, under the supervision of Professor Monica Bordegoni. Her research deals with how to use virtual technologies (such as interactive virtual prototypes, augmented reality and body motion tracking) as tools for concept design, with a special focus on the intangible aspects of user experience and emotions. Monica Bordegoni is a professor at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano since 2004. Her research interests include methods and tools for virtual prototyping of products, multisensory interaction, haptic interaction, emotional engineering and creativity in product design, user experience. She is member of the Executive Committee of the ASME-CIE Division, and co-chair of the Design Society SIG on Emotional Engineering. She is the coordinator of the International School on Virtual Prototyping.

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