Experience goal-driven design: A design tool for exploring and defining experience goals

Thumbnail Image

Files

master_Saratlieva_Paula_2020.pdf (8.4 MB)

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.

Authors

Date

2020

Department

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

72+15

Series

Abstract

Experiences are the only evidence one has of existence. They are inevitable, dynamic, and context-dependent, yet their quality determines whether one’s life is worth living. Experiences shape emotions, memories, as well as personalities. They hold the superpower to lead one’s life towards flourishing and well-being. Designing for meaningful experiences is the objective behind Experience-Focused Design (XFD), where the challenge for designers is to begin and keep the experience as the spotlight throughout the iterative design process. An instrument at designers’ disposal is a set of Experience Goals (Xgoals), high-level design objectives, which hold positive experiential characteristics at the core. However, as research and the complex nature of experience suggests, the process of defining Xgoals, which initiates the design activities, proves to be a difficult task for designers due to the focus shift from the traditional problem-solution to experience-driven mindset. Therefore, this thesis recognizes the need for a design tool aimed to facilitate the Xgoals definition process and offer an explorative space for Xgoal ideation. By addressing this need, this thesis seeks to aspire and empower designers to make their first steps towards designing for experiences. This thesis’ journey began with a theoretical background providing the backbone and key aspects for the followed activities: Xgoal mapping, design tool creation, and the tool’s evaluation. Through a questionnaire and semi-structured discussions, a pre-selected list of Xgoals were mapped to human psychological needs, which are identified as a source of Xgoals. The outcomes of Xgoal mapping and key aspects derived from the theoretical background paved the path for the creation of the design tool. It was later on evaluated with eight designers. The data for the evaluation of the design tool was collected through feedback forms, observations, and thematic interviews. The results support previous XFD research claims, such as the difficulty of grasping the experience-driven process, especially during the Xgoal definition phase, and that the high-level Xgoals keep the focus on experiential aspects. Despite the supportive findings, the results suggest that the concept design tool is able to facilitate the Xgoal definition process by providing visual guidance for designers, who also found the tool to be explorative and empowering. Moreover, the findings support the author’s initial assumptions about utilizing the created design tool since the results indicate designers’ interest in implementing it in future projects. This thesis contributes to the design research by introducing a novel design tool to facilitate and explore Xgoals for designers’ creative journey towards making meaningful experiences a reality and thereby address the highest known design goal: human flourishing and well-being.

Description

Supervisor

Roto, Virpi

Thesis advisor

Roto, Virpi

Keywords

designers, experience, positive psychology, psychological needs, experience goals, experience-focused design, design tool, mapping

Other note

Citation

Permanent link to this item

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202006143748

Collections

[master] Taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu / ARTS