User Centred Design and Experience Design are both schools of thought with one clear goal – to make users lives better. People who know me will testify that trying to make users lives better is one of my primary motivations when it comes to approaching web design.

Some usability reasearch appears to ignore the emotional, which I believe is a key part of the overall experience. I think advertisers know this, which is probably why we have so much advertising based on humour. Creating a positive emotional response from somebody is pretty much akin to making a friend. Except its not you making a friend, its your brand. And thats going to be far more long lasting than any tactical great deal or offer (although friends do like favours!)

As such I was thrilled to read the “Experience Design Manifesto” – written by Andrë Braz.

In the manifesto Andre outlines his ideas for what Experience Design should do which includes the following points.

Experiences that foster happiness should have the following qualities:

• Make people feel confident of themselves.
• Make people feel they can do something better. Empowers people to do something in a better way.
• Improve people’s lives helping to solve existing pragmatic problems
• Make people have an enjoyable and fun time during the experience, thus making life worth to be lived.
• Surprises people in a magic way, bringing delight to the eyes and making the mind wonder.
• Create an emotional connection between everyone involved, the experience itself and the one supporting the experience (a brand or a person)
• Make the world a better place to live
• Strenghten relationships between people that live the same experience

Read the “Experience Design Manifesto” – written by Andrë Braz.

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Experience Design Manifesto

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

From Fubiz

Wales in Style provides the discerning visitor with the very best of Welsh tourism. It’s a by-invitation-only online community centred on a Website seed-funded originally by the Welsh Assembly, now run as partnership subscription model operated by Designate on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The award recognises creativity, user-friendliness, conversion levels, and effectiveness to increase traffic and boost sales.

I was involved heavily with the project, converting initial concept work into final designs, working on the IA closely with one of our producers, performing some ad-hoc user testing, and finally building the detailed html templates.

We endeavoured to make the website fully accessible and we’re delighted with the outcome of both a great looking website based on well formed and semantic html.

Designate won the award Best Agency for Website Design in the category Marketing and Innovation awards.

http://www.walesinstyle.com