Jon Kolko, ACD at frog design, has a great post up at Johnny Holland Magazine today. Despite the somewhat breathtaking length of the post, it’s well worth a read:

Our Misguided Focus on Brand and User Experience

Some of my favorite bits of the post are these:
“The supposed new model is to design something for a person to experience, yet the allusion to experience is only an empty gesture. An experience cannot be built for someone. Fundamentally, one has an experience, and that is experience is always unique.”

“For most designers, this responsibility is hidden by the celebratory claims of designing experiences. This claim almost abdicates the long-term responsibility, as “an experience” has an end, at which time the designers’ role seemingly ends. The work is meaningful only on an immediate level of craft and creation, and while designers often take pride in a product once it has launched, they do not frequently make the connection between their creations and the culture that surrounds them. “They’ve stopped using my product – their experience is over.” Convenient – but utterly false.”

At the end of the post, Jon states that “instead of control, we must focus on frameworks. Instead of seeking to own and prescribe a singular experience, we must strive to adapt to the peculiarities and nuances of human behavior.”

Coincidentally, the focus on frameworks vs. control (of the product) was one of the main themes/realizations that came out of the IDEA conference in Toronto earlier this year.

This idea puts pressure on the process we use now to create our work. If  we give up our urge to control, we have to move from a production line/waterfall process type mentality to a more agile, fluid model of thinking and assigning roles.

Karri Ojanen