Six Phases of the Experience Design Process

In order to structure our approach and to allow for a reproducibility of our process, we divided it into six consecutive phases. In general, we followed the process model for user-centered design [88, p. 168] including user research and data analysis, concepts, prototypes and evaluation. Due to the importance of iterating concepts and prototypes with different degrees of fidelity and resolution, we implemented two concept and two implementation phases. Each phase consists of several process steps, which I will explain in the following sections.

Analysis Phase

The first step of the first phase is the definition of a user group, including demographic data, market analyses and strategic decisions. During step two, the user research including ob-servation methods (e.g., ’A day in the live’ or ’Shadowing’), semi-structured interviews and

4.1 The CAR@TUM Experience Design Process 53

Figure 4.3: The Experience Framework is the result of the analysis phase of the CAR@TUM Experience Design Process. It defines Excitement, Sustainability and Openness and central themes for the design of experiences in the electric vehicle.

online surveys, we collect insights and experiences as a basis for later concepts. In step three, we structure the data collected during user research with the goal to identify user needs and motives. As experience designers, we focus on the positive aspects of interactive systems.

Thus, the goal of step four is the identification of chances, i.e. potential experiences, instead of problems that need to be solved. Subsequently, as a milestone for the analysis phase, we define a framework, representing the essential findings from user research, in one single visual representation (see figure 4.3). The framework summarizes the most promising po-tentials for designing experiences, including first ideas and scribbles to support the validity and value of each potential.

Concept Phase I

The creation of experience stories is in the focus of the second process phase. Each story, derived from the framework, describes a potential experience in form of a written text. The story describes emotions, feelings and important interactions, but does not provide imple-mentation details in order to avoid influences by technical constraints. Our first evaluation cycle starts in this early phase with online studies investigating the fulfillment of psycholog-ical needs and arousal of positive emotions while participants read the story and put them-selves in the role of the main character. The milestone of this phase is a collection of stories, each representing a positive experience. With the completion of Concept Phase I stories are fixed, meaning that they are not allowed to be changed at any step of the design process

in order to ensure a consistent experience. Therewith, the stories need to be translated into qualitative requirements that will complement the requirement specification defined during the following phases.

Concept Phase II

The experience stories resulting from the first concept phase need to be translated into sto-ryboards during the second concept phase. These stosto-ryboards contain six to eight frames, visualizing the key elements of the story. According to [8], such a visualization is already a representation of an experience and therefore a prototype. Thus, similar to stories, sto-ryboards need to be evaluated according to their need fulfillment and arousal of positive emotions. While drawing the frames, which is usually a competence of the Experience Designer, he is in a close exchange with the Developer. While refining and updating the storyboard they develop more detailed ideas about the interactive system that will realize the designed experience. The Developer implements first hardware or software prototypes in order to provide the look and feel of the future system, deriving technical requirements in addition to qualitative requirements from Concept Phase I. In an iterative process, the story-board influences the next version of the prototype, which again affects the next storystory-board.

Storyboards together with early experience prototypes constitute the milestone of this phase.

Implementation Phase I

The milestone of the first implementation phase are prototypes implementing a higher fi-delity and resolution compared to the early prototypes from the Concept Phase. The proto-types need to be interactive and robust enough for first extensive user tests. To ensure that the designed experiences are triggered while interacting with the prototypes, evaluations of every adapted implementation are crucial. We suggest to realize several alternatives of one prototype when certain design decisions need to be made. Results of an experience evalua-tion comparing both prototypes can support such a decision.

Implementation Phase II

When building a rather complex product, several development teams implement interactive systems with possibly different experience designs in parallel. These experiences potentially influence each other, affecting our goal of creating a holistic user experience. Therefore, a virtual concept for the integration of all components, including constraints such as safety and space, must be part of the design process. We suggest the development of this concept in Concept Phase I and a hand-over to all other phases. During Implementation Phase II we integrate high-fidelity and high-resolution prototypes into their working environment (e.g., in our case, a car’s dashboard) based on the integration concept. Positive results in terms of need fulfillment and triggering positive emotions demonstrate the successful design of a holistic experience.