Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
What Is User Experience?
“Reinventing the wheel” is a cliché we've all heard. When we think up something “new,”
then someone points out that it's been in existence for generations, we know we've done the
same thing as the toddler who thinks he's the first one to notice the uses of things that roll.
When the toddler fashions a makeshift “wheel” he thinks he's changed the world. Then a
grownup points out that the human race has been riding on wheels for ages. It's a part of
learning.
User experience has had this effect on the world of digital design. Consumers have been
buying digital products for decades, but only in the last few years have digital designers star-
ted including the wants and needs of this audience in our calculations. Only now are we be-
ginning to accept the idea that a normal user's experience with a product should be a primary
concern in the design process. In most other consumer-based fields, user experience is the
main driver in product design, and always has been. Once someone thought up a product,
the first question designers asked was: how can we make it into something people will use?
This was true of watches and washing machines as it is of tool bars and wireless connec-
tions.
So why did it take so long for user experience to find its way into digital design? One
reason is that the digital divisions in our society started early and essentially in a vacuum.
In the 1970s, during the formative years of the digital revolution, designers were creating
products for themselves, or people like themselves: ones with a technical background. Most
digital devices and services were in labs, research facilities and data processing hubs. In
those days “design” wasn't a fully acknowledged specialty in the digital world. Every know-
ledgeable, inventive person in the digital community was a designer. When a computer filled
a small building, and digital products were the purview of scientists, technicians, and insti-
tutions, there wasn't much problem. Digital designers and their audience were on intimate
terms. Often the audience was the designer. Almost all the people on both ends were creative
tinkerers who thought nothing of working through complex instructions. They were accus-
tomed to it.
In the 1980s, the first flood of PCs hit the market. These desktop miracles (cumbersome
by today's standards) required long-term maintenance contracts. Users often took courses on
how to operate the appropriate software. As the general public entered the digital world, a
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