Product Description

With Experience Design, Nathan Shedroff has designed and written a book for those in the digital and related design professions, especially those creating online and interactive media who are looking for core inspiration and meaning in their work. This is a book directly at the intersection of today's design disciplines - interaction design, information design, visual design, and more. Shedroff provides not only a way of designing online experience, but also, and more importantly, an approach to all design, whether it be of products, services, environments, or events. Read cover-to-cover, Experience Design is a kind of textbook that presents theories and examples. Opened to any page at random, it is a source of inspiration that challenges your thinking about your creative work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #444228 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Experience Design's layout is itself an experience in design. With its dynamic typography and visually elusive chapter divisions, it is definitely not a how-to manual or even a primer on software. It's more like a visual and textual think-piece: a personal gallery of intriguing user experiences, eg: online shopping or offline dinner parties--even human-to-human conversation. (You can get an idea of this at the book's companion Web site: www.experiencedesignbooks.com.)

Every spread is filled with images (in some cases, the very typography is like an image) that illustrate specific issues in experience design. Examples range from Web sites to traffic signs to restaurants. Whether discussing a young woman's online diary (www.moments.org); the seating arrangements at Emeril's Delmonico restaurant in New Orleans; the complaint community at Kvetch.com; the garden-like bounty of Nokia mobile phone covers; or the "simpler" experiences of matches, tarot cards or Bang & Olufsen home media products, author Shedroff invites readers to figure out what the attraction is, what keeps the user engaged and how the experience gets resolved. Among the general topics explored are navigation in information design, usability in interface design and narrative structure in interaction design. All come with online and offline examples (eg: the Louvre for "offline" navigation and www.thehungersite.com for online usability).

Shedroff is an experience strategist and has designed experiences in a variety of media, especially interactive and information design and branding. His client list includes Herman Miller, Nike, Bell Atlantic, Swissbank and Microsoft. In 1995 I.D. named him one of the 40 most important designers in the country. Here his analyses, like the form of the book, are open and flowing. Whether he's discussing wayfinding, personal meaning or the use of metaphoric devices, Shedroff raises important questions for anyone involved in design today. In many ways, this book is like a list of author's favourites--albeit a list in which each item illuminates some kernel of contemporary design wisdom. --Angelynn Grant

Review
"A stunning book that would be equally at home in the art or IT sections of the bookshop."Freelance Informer, Aug 2001 "It provides a visually eclectic assortment of sources."WEBSPACE, Aug 2001

From the Publisher
Shows how to create a positive ¿experierence¿ on the web
The field of experience design is emerging to help define what great experiences are (so that knowledge can be built from them) and to discover processes for creating these experiences. This book draws on all types of design (industrial, architecture, fashion) as well as the performing arts (theater, storytelling, party planning.

Provides concepts and methods for designers to create meaningful, truly interactive experiences.

Inspires designers with case studies that point the way toward more interactive, fulfilling experiences in all media.

Presented in two- and four-page spreads, the form of the book is itself an experience. It is a balance of visually-oriented materials and text, with impact ranging from subtle and seductive to bold and provocative.

Book Content Summary: The book is designed and written for those in the digital and related design professions—especially those creating online and interactive media—who are looking for core inspiration and meaning in their work. Some of the topics covered in two or four page spreads will include: Technology vs. people,Beauty, Interactivity and Interactive Meaning, Values, Brand, Passivity, Language, Feedback, Time and Motion, Control, Structure, Creativity, Commerce, Adaptivity, Hierarchy & Structure Personalization , Data, Customer-centric Design, Wisdom, The Senses, Metaphors & Similes, Seductive Design,Wayfinding, Community Perception User Behavior, Performing Arts Look vs. Feel,

Globalization/Localization

Audience: The audience for this book is visual or graphic designers, information architects, engineers, producers, strategists, directors and even clients. The book will inspire and motivate both beginners and experienced experts in each of these professions.

Customer Reviews

(Novel, High Level) Experience Design (for the Bay Area)
This book offers a difficult experience, literally. It flops uncomfortably in your hands. Don't try reading this on an airplane or train. Some text disappears into the spine and some is set in white against a grey and white background. Not very friendly. While the linear experience of a book is largely ignored - it's basically a set of narrated web links in book form. All of which wouldn't matter so much, if the author wasn't very consciously trying to "walk the talk" and make the book be an experience, as well as be about designing experiences.

Move past the form, and into the function of the book, and you find a tour de horizon of a fascinating subject. If you are a novice to this area, it will help open your mind to the possibilities of constructing experiential environments, giving you lots of space and examples for the succinct messages to sink-in. If you are not a novice, you'll find a fluff of high level messages without detailed analysis and an over concentration on the visual and the novel, and no recognition of global cultural issues in designing world-wide accessible experiences.

I wanted more from this book, but can see that for some it would a useful place to start their journey.

Mostly eyecandy
OK, there's the occasional snippet of useful or thought-provoking info here, but mostly it's an extended example of style over substance. Self-consciouly hip and largely meaningless, I'd advise you to save your money for anything by Edward R Tufte instead.