Experience design

Q: Does experience design also apply to physical services?

Absolutely. Experience design encompasses physical services as much as digital ones. Thinking through the flow of people and the layout of a space calls for the same kind of reasoning, even if the tools differ. The layout of an airport lounge, the journey in a branch or a self-service ordering kiosk fall within the same approach as designing a digital service. This is what brings experience design closer to service design.

Q: What are the typical deliverables of an experience design project?

The main deliverable of experience design is wireframes, that is, low-fidelity mockups. However, several intermediate deliverables are possible, in particular the user flow, the experience map, the zoning, and so on.

Concept

Thinking about experience beyond the interface

Experience design (UX design) focuses on a user's overall experience with a product or service. It covers the complete journey, from discovering the product/service to using it and its end of life. Experience design takes into account users' emotions, usage contexts and expectations to design products that meet real needs.

UX design lays out the architecture of the interface, the path between pages. Unlike UI, experience design isn't shaped by aesthetic questions. Here you think about substance, not form.

What is experience design for?

designing products centred on users' real needs
identifying and reducing friction across the whole journey, not just on a single screen
aligning design decisions with a coherent vision of the intended experience

Why practise experience design?

launching a new product by putting users, rather than features, at the centre of the thinking
improving an existing product whose metrics or user feedback show friction points

The journey

thinking through each of the user's actions to model their journey.

Zoning

setting the overall structure of the page, its breakdown into sections.

Wireframes

breaking down each section with the main components to create the detailed skeleton of each page in the journey.

User testing

To test the usage experience as faithfully as possible

Does experience design also apply to physical services?

What are the typical deliverables of an experience design project?

Related methods

Interaction design

Interaction design defines what a user can do and how a product responds to actions: flows, states, transitions, feedback.

Interface design

UI design shapes the visual layer of a product: layout, colours, typography, components. It turns the experience into tangible elements.

Service design

Service design shapes the whole experience of a service, online and at the counter, beyond its screens. Definition, public sector and examples.

Experience map

The experience map focuses on the visible part of the experience: what a user goes through with a service or product, before, during and after.

UX mapping

UX mapping represents a concept or a problem in a simplified form, to make it easier to understand and take ownership of.

Personas

Personas come out of work on user-profile modelling. They highlight behavioural archetypes that prove useful when designing.

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