Constantin von Saucken

How to create a user experience story

Narratives are a tool used in many disciplines. In the area of User Experience Design (UXD), in particular, a storytelling approach can be applied during the whole design process to improve the quality of developed concepts regarding user experience (UX). Furthermore stories support designers in exploring and communicating their new concept ideas. However, the guidelines on how to create a story are either too abstract or do not focus on the experience elements of the interaction. This paper aims at systemizing the storytelling approach in the context of UXD in a ten-step-methodology for story creation. The proposed approach emphasizes on experience-related elements of interaction. The UX story is written by and aims at designers with the scope to communicate UX and reinforce it in product implementation. Further, the approach is systemized in a ten-steps-description with additional form sheets in order to support the application by designers from various backgrounds. In future projects a systematic evaluation of the tools introduced would validate the observed positive outcomes of applying storytelling in UX projects.

How to design experiences: macro UX versus micro UX approach

User Experience (UX) can be achieved by a user-related products purpose (Macro UX) as well as by pleasant embodiment design in detail concerning material, usability and interface (Micro UX). Existing approaches mostly represent the Macro UX approach and therefore demand influencing the whole development process, in particular the early stage of goal setting. Furthermore, they are often psychology-driven. For that reason they are hardly implemented in industrial practice. We observe that most development projects are not triggered by user considerations but by market or technology influences. We show how to achieve an impact on the products emotional quality and UX by supporting the design phase of those projects incrementally (Micro UX). Based on psychological foundation this approach provides pragmatic short-term support to designers in an adequate language to be applicable.

User Experience Milestones

The approach of User Experience (UX) can help to create a unique selling proposition in mature markets like the automobile industry by meeting motives of users and evoking positive emotions. Yet, the User Experience goal is not continuously implemented in existing product development processes. In this paper we discuss the question: How can a continuous focus on the user’s experience with a new product and the demands of a heterogeneous and mostly technical development process be brought together. We suggest six continuous, consistent, evolutionary UX milestones for the development of successful experience products. These milestones embody the intended UX, accompany the developers and evolve from a rough UX orientation, to more and more detailed user stories, to physical prototypes, the final product and its UX evaluation. By defining six UX milestones as compulsory checkpoints we facilitate the anchorage of UX aspects in established development processes.

Cross-Cultural User Experience Design Helping Product Designers to Consider Cultural Differences

User experience (UX) designers aim to create a product that causes a pleasant emotional reaction in order to generate an enjoyable memory. However, emotions are subjective and diverse because of cultural differences. As a consequence, cultural differences in UX design are often considered only as theoretical exercises. In this paper, we aim to bridge the gap between theoretical cultural studies and practical application. We analyze established cultural dimensions as well as notes from observational studies, business presentations and ethnographic interviews. Finally, we present “Cultural Personas”, application-oriented tools that characterize derived cultural differences. That supports designers to consider a culturally sensitive UX and thereby to develop better, more enjoyable products.

User-Centered Design for Research:Following our Own Recommendations

The core idea of user-centered design is to understand your user and design a product accordingly: making it easy, fast and intuitive to understand. But we observe that scientists often forget these recommendations themselves: They write highly text-heavy papers, books and guidelines that do not meet their user’s (the designers) needs. Designers must design for their customers, so consistently researchers need to design research documentation for designers. In this paper we discuss the basic idea of user-centered design as well as corresponding methods and transfer them to the field of scientific research. Two industrial case studies clarify the application.

How to Impress Your User: Guideline for Designing the Product Impression

The development of products requires considering multiple—partially contradictory—aspects (e.g. manufacture, usability, costs etc.). “Design for X” (X is replaced by the specific aspect) guidelines meet this challenge; however, there is a deficit of effective “Design for Emotion” approaches. We present a guideline with product parameters and design principles taken from engineering literature and enrich them with product impressions answering: How shall the product appear? Which emotions shall the design cause? We determine the dependencies between these elements and illustrate them in a figurative and usable way. By applying the guideline (engineering and industrial) designers can systematically vary parameters by applying adequate design principles to create a specific impression. This supports the emotional design of products caused by visual appearance.

A User Experience Design Toolkit

User experience design (UXD) is a user-centered and interdisciplinary process, throughout which designers need applicable and feasible methods, tools and criteria. Still only few methods and tools supporting designers in understanding, creating and evaluating user experience systematically are to be found. This paper aims at creating a framework of selected methods, which support designers, even non-UXD-experts, in these activities. The methods come from the fields of product development-engineering, industrial design and interface design and have been applied and adapted in a research project with collaboration with industry. With reference to current state of the art, the methods applied are reviewed and extended with recommendations identified by the researchers. The recommendations should support UXD-practitioners in selecting appropriate, usable and applicable methods, which are most likely to result in positive user experience.

Motive-Oriented Design

Modern car interiors are often overloaded and not self-explanatory. We supported running development projects within car industry and observed the following reasons: Similar functions are developed in different departments without a sufficient coordination and integration into the car. Functions are arranged according to technologies. Engineers have trouble with putting themselves in a user’s position. Therefore, we present a motive-oriented approach: It supports engineers in taking the user’s perspective by tools for investigating users’ motives, clustering them in use scenarios, matching them with functions, illustrating them in an understandable way and running real-user tests.