When Nathan Shedroff wrote the first edition of his Experience Design in 2001, he staked out a position as a thought leader in an emerging field. The book got a mixed response, the most common criticism being that while the point of view and table of contents are valuable, the actual content of the book is shallow and compromised by a book design that fragments the narrative and camouflages the text. So when Shedroff decided to release a new edition to mark the original book’s eighth anniversary, one might have hoped he would address these shortcomings and try to deepen the book’s perspective.

Shedroff’s updated book argues that attending to the many facets and layers of human experience is foundational for the work of design. He builds on this by presenting 50 topics organized into six sections: experience design, information design, interface design, interaction design, the senses, and sensorial design. Within those sections, the topics are each structured in the same way: a description or point of view in a single two-page spread, followed by one online example and one offline example, each with their own two-page spread.

For example, the section on information design holds 12 topics. Among them: data, information, knowledge, wisdom, multiplicity, subjectivity, consistency, and metaphors. Examples in this section include traffic signs, cooking class, COLORS magazine, Google Translator, Salon.com, and a Burmese tea party. The fact that each topic includes examples from life in the real world as well as systems in the virtual world does a lot to support and amplify Shedroff’s theme: Human experience is rich, varied, deep, and difficult to quantify. And so is design for experience.

The new edition updates the collection of examples. And it’s these examples that make the book a resource for a good Web-surfing session, or teaching reference,, or even a guide for vacation ideas!

Unfortunately, the accompanying narrative often fails to add insight, or to connect the parts into a larger whole. While the book articulates a valuable point of view, it fails to build a sustained argument. Since the first edition of the book, the set of ideas and approaches that are touched upon in Experience Design have become more widely accepted, and much more deeply explored. The world is ready for a deeper, more sophisticated treatment of those ideas. Alas, the world will have to keep waiting.

Some readers will find valuable ideas in the text, and we expect that some professors may find a way

to incorporate pieces of the book into readings or exercises. We recommend browsing the book before buying to find out if you are one of those people.

Shedroff recently shared a set of course materials on the Web based on the material in the Experience Design 1. 1—including a syllabus, presentation, and a set of templates. These should be valuable to professors and practitioners alike as they provide a strong complement to the material in the book. The course is called Experience Studio, and can be downloaded from http://www.nathan.com/thoughts.

Each of these books has an audience among the growing crowd of people who are preparing themselves to shape the ways in which technology affects our society, our organizations, and our planet. And each has its place on the expanding landscape of what we know about that work. To better the world through design requires a degree of knowledge and craft at all these levels: the detailed and technical aspects of creating interfaces between people and technology, the organically complex qualities of human experience, and the skills required to marshal teams through the difficult and uncertain work of creation. These books may or may not be the right resources for what you need in your growth as a professional. But it is an encouraging sign of progress to note that these books reflect a growing maturity of design thinking and practice in the overlapping bundle of fields we call interaction design.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Marc Rettig is principal
of Fit Associates, LLC, a transformation design firm
in Pittsburgh, PA. Fit integrates ethnographic
research, design methods, process coaching, and
lessons from social change into a practice of help-
ing organizations change to make products better
for people. Rettig’s 29-year career has been guided by an interest in
people, systems, communication, anthropology and the power of
design. After an initial career in software systems, he has spent 15
years as a designer of interactions, products, services, experiences,
and transformations. He has taught both lecture and studio courses
at Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Design and the Institute of
Design, IIT in Chicago.

Alex Wright is the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. He has led user experience design initiatives for the New York Times, Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, Harvard University, and the Long Now Foundation, among others. His writing has appeared in Salon.com, the Christian Science

Monitor, Harvard Magazine, and other publications. He writes regularly about technology and design at http://www.alexwright.org.

November + December 2009

DOI: 10.1145/1620693.1620706
© 2009 ACM 1072-5220/09/1100 $10.00