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Article Excerpt
Abstract
An approach to developing a research method course for user experience design is discussed. The interplay between objective scientific study and interpretive humanistic inquiry is readily seen in this emergent field. A framework based on four paradigmatic questions is developed. Experience design is explored in relationship to experiments, surveys, qualitative descriptive inquiry, and rhetorical research. Students learn that research questions drive the choice of methodologies and methods. The key is for students to gain the skills to apply the correct methodologies to the design situation.
Introduction
Information design, user experience design, and new product development use methods from both the sciences and the humanities. In product development, different business disciplines such as technical communication, usability research, marketing, and engineering work toward the development of new products (Keiman, Anschuetz, & Rosenbaum, 2002). "Experience design or experience-driven design can be considered as a new strategy in industrial design and major corporations (Nokia, Philips, Nike) claim to have adopted it for their product development" (Hekkert, Mostert, & Stompff, 2003, p. 114). This article provides a case analysis of how to best develop a user experience research design course in which methodologies from the humanities and sciences are utilized in an interdisciplinary fashion. Students studying experience design should learn rationalistic and humanistic research approaches. With rationalist measurements, students learn the basics of traditional human factor principles that "objectively" measure human machine interaction. Furthermore, experience design implies social connectedness and action that requires the need to understand how information transfers meaning between human and machine, and also between people using the technology (i.e., machine). In this methodological framework, the technical artifact is considered part of the user experience within a context.
The main question becomes what methodologies and methods are best used for interaction and experience design? Strauss and Corbin (1998) stated that methodology is a "way of gathering knowledge about the world" (p. 4). Experience design research is a melding of methodologies from the humanities and sciences to establish knowledge on how people live with and shape the uses of consumer products. Experience design brings "together ideas from a wide array of disciplines with exciting results, including economics, electronic commerce, psychology, sociology, communications, artificial intelligence, and other specialty areas in computer science such as virtual reality and persuasive technologies, as well as theatre and entertainment" (McLellan, 2000, p. 60). More specifically, "the goal of experience design is to orchestrate experiences that are not only functional and purposeful, but also engaging, compelling, memorable, and enjoyable" (McLellan, 2000, p. 59-60). As products, information and communication technologies (ICT) are especially designed to become more ubiquitous. Thus, our design methodologies need to be more sensitive to how people and products can seamlessly interact.
While experience design is a potentially powerful approach, it is "still in its infancy" (Hekkert, Mostert, & Stompff, p. 119). The rise of products such as ICTs beacon the need to develop an experience design discipline with a stockpile of research methods. An area fostering this development is human factors, which is traditionally cognitive and behavioral. Yet, experience design calls for a wider range of approaches "... we need to better understand how the different approaches relate...
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