XDF was created to be used. It is a tool for completing activities and achieving goals. Consider its usefulness in these ways.
For Research
Experience designers often conduct field research to discover people’s needs, values, and design preferences. This work involves observations, interviews, and surveys to gain insights. XDF helps guide research into contexts, people, and design—enabling researchers to use a wide range of lenses when studying experience design scenes.
For Designing
Experience Design is media-agnostic. Designers do not assume that an app or a service will be designed from the start. Instead, they identify which feelings and experiences should be facilitated and then select the types of design outcomes that would best achieve these goals. XDF helps designers consider a wide range of people’s real and perceived sensations and how to design outcomes to make them happen.
For Teaching
Traditional design privileges the artifact—a poster, a typeface, an app—as the impetus of the design process. Emphasizing artifacts often means that people’s uniqueness and contextual factors can be neglected. Experience design expands the concerns for design beyond the artifact and usability. XDF helps educators and learners consider a broad spectrum of factors that shape people’s experiences and design in experience design scenes.
Components of Experience Design Scenes
Whenever a person completes an activity, three components interact: context, people, and design. Each component in an experience design scene shapes the overall experience. Contextual factors, such as weather, can make people feel uncomfortable, or design factors, like small menu typography, can make it difficult to use in low light. Careful attention to each component is needed if designers hope to create a relevant and meaningful design.
