TOTAL EXPERIENCE explores designing for experience: its theory, its practice, and how designing for experiences affects us socially and in our personal lives.
YOUR T.E. CO-AUTHORS:
- Bob Jacobson
- Paula Thornton
Contact the TE Team
(NOTE: While we read all comments, we do not publish anonymous comments.)
About Your Authors
BOB JACOBSON is fascinated by the experience of experience. A planner and technologist, Bob has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning & Design from UCLA. He's been a policy researcher, technology CEO, science writer, and consultant. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied cellular telephony's impacts on transborder communities in the Nordic Arctic Circle. Bob edited Information Design (MIT Press 2000) and is now writing a book on the theory and practice of creating edifying, transformative experiences.
( Archive | Contact Bob )
PAULA THORNTON says, "Understanding human behavior and designing interactions for human expectations are the means to achieve strategic differentiation. This is the focus of our discipline. It is not a Œnice to have‚ and is not, like documentation once was, an afterthought. It is the means by which to start a strategic discussion and the means by which to drive a tactical initiative. All design should be evidence-based."
( Archive | Contact Paula )
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN:
THE METAVERSE....
CALENDAR OF EXPERIENCE DESIGN EVENTS
(Courtesy of Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia SpA, Torino)
Experience Design Websites
Core 77 Website & Forum
Business Week|Innovate
InfoD: Understsanding by Design
The Wayfinding Place
Wayfinding Focus
Design Addict
L-ARCH (Landscape Architecture Mailing List)
DUX 2007 Conference
NetDiver.Net
DesignBoom
Digital Thread
Archinect
Enmeshed, Digital Arts & New Media
Ludology (Game Playing Theory)
Captology, Persuasive Computing
Space and Culture
Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces
timet (acoustical design)
Steve Portigal, Ethnographer
Jane McGonigal's Avant Game
Ted Wells' living : simple
PingMag (Japan)
Experience Design Blogs
Adam Greenfield's Speedbird
Experience Designer Network (Brian Alger)
SmartSpace: Annotated Environments (Scott Smith)
Don Norman
Doors of Perception (John Thackara)
Karl Long's Experience Curve
Work•Play•Experience (Adam Lawrence)
The David Report (David Carlson)
Design & Emotion (Marco van Hout)
Museum 2.0 (Nina Simon)
B J Fogg
Lorenzo Brusci (acoustics)
Cool Town Studios
FutureLab
Steve Portigal
Debbie Millman
MIT Culture Convergence Consortium
Luke Wroblewski, Functioning Form|Interface Design
Adam Richardson
Putting People First (Paul Vanderbeeken/Experientia
Laws of Simplicity (John Maeda)
Challis Hodge's UX Blog
Anne Galloways's Purse Lips Square Jaw
Bruno Giussani's Lunch over IP
Jane McGonigal's Avant-Game
The Future of Work
Experience Design Podcasts
Ted Wells' living : simple Podcast
Design Matters Podcast, Debbie Millman
Icon-o-Cast Podcast, Lunar Design
Experience Design Firms and ED-Oriented Manufacturers
Barry Howard Limited
Hilary Cottam
LRA Worldwide, Inc.
BRC Imagination Arts
Stone Mantel
Experientia s.r.l
Nokia
Herman Miller
Steelcase
IDEO
Cooper Interactive Design
Gensler
Doblin Group
Fitch
Fit Associates
Jump
Strategic Horizons LLC (Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore)
Cheskin Fresh Perspectives
Education and Advocacy
Centre for Design Research, Northumbria University (UK)
Center for Design Research, Stanford University
International Institute of Information Design (IIID)
Design Management Institute
AIGA DUX
Interaction Institute IVREA
Design Research Institute (UK)
UC Berkeley Center for Environmental Design Research
History of Consciousness, UCSC
Design News Magazine
Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD)
Design Museum London
Center for Sustainable Design
Horizon Zero, Digital Arts+Culture in Canada
Design Council UK
First Monday
Total Experience on Technorati
Technorati Profile
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Category Archives
October 30, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 I've been absent from Total Experience for several weeks. Here's why....
Movable Type, Corante.com's server software, was upgraded in September. In the process, it became incompatible with my Ecto for the Mac blog editor. Having worked so long with Ecto, I can't go back to MT. Ecto's that much better. After a lot of hard work on their part, Corante.com übermeister Hylton Jolliffe and tech wiz Reeve Jolliffe got the softwares working together again. Mighty thanks to both!
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June 28, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 The last two weeks have been glad and sad.
Glad to be in a new place, see old friends, and be free of the last year's emotional burdens. Sad to have left Santa Monica and my dear friends there, the relationship that was my family, and the fabulous little girl I came to love as my own. Sad, too, that my destroyed Mac G4 Powerbook rendered me unable to blog here, to experience the catharsis of creation.
These too shall pass. The memory to upgrade my Mac G3 Powerbook, the best machine I own for writing and blogging -- a work of ergonomic genius, as subsequent Macs have not been -- finally arrived. I installed it a couple of days ago and have been testing it. It works. As you can see, I'm “back in the saddle and ready to ride!” (to quote local rodeo lore). Thanks to Paula for her continuing postings of interest in the meantime.
Tomorrow I'll pick up again where I had to leave off: exploring the varieties and qualities of spiritual experience, and their relation to the experiences that we seek to understand and for which we design. I'll also open a conversation about my future plans, which include a total immersion in innovation, and invite your comments....
Over on Speedbird, Adam Greenfield has penned one of the best essays on experience and experience design ever to grace a blog. It's a modern take on philosophy and general systems thinking as applied to experience design, and what we can and cannot design for, experientially. Thank you, Adam, for a smooth exposition.
(Image: Odd Items)
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May 28, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 My weekend plan to describe Experience as that term has been used in different traditions -- spiritual, philosophical, scientific, and so forth -- was set back by a surprise assignment that requires me to temporarily relocate out of state.
I'll be moving next week (to Arizona, for the month of June). I used this weekend to decide what I'll take with me and what I'll let go. As an itinerant scholar and consultant -- a peddler of ideas -- I like to pare down with each bend in the road.
But I'm on the case. Please stay tuned: the promised blog entries will appear this week.
(Image: Peter Horvath, 6168.org)
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May 7, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 I'm away for the week at Esalen, in Big Sur, CA, the birthplace of the "human potential" and "transformation" movements: discovering the potential of the self in preparation to engender positive changes in the world. I'll be writing of my experiences on my return. And yes, I intend to use Esalen's fabled hot tubs as well as engage in meaningful conversations. Possibly both at the same time....
In the meantime, check in to see what Paula's up to.
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January 29, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 This is zhuanji, the Chinese word for “a stroke of good luck!" As you may have noticed, I've been absent from this blog for the last week. I'm engaged in probably the most important experience design project of my career, and this phase of it has an early February deadline that I absolutely must meet. I can't talk about this project now: it's what the current generation of money-chasers call “stealth.” I promise to tell all, once this mission is accomplished. Thanks for your patience and thanks also to Paula Thornton, who continues to post provocative entries worth your while. (For a much-needed caution on the frequent but incorrect use of the Chinese word for crisis, weiji, to mean “opportunity," as I almost did, see “Danger Plus Opportunity Does Not Equal Crisis,” on Pinyin.info. Weiji is actually a situation to be feared: the unknown abyss.)
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January 8, 2007
Posted by Bob Jacobson
My colleague Paula and I tend to publish Total Experience in spurts. A week or even two will go by without a blog entry -- and then three, four, or more explode out of our minds and onto the screen. Maybe that's because we don't have brilliant thoughts every day, at least not ones we deem worthy of taking your time to share. Real insights come of their own accord, on their own schedule. Not each day when we wake up.
This defies the laws of media, best exemplified by television with its mostly empty content, but content nonetheless, continuously broadcast, cablecast, or netcast so that the viewers won't tune out. Media colleagues, they've already tuned out. They sit passively, thankful for the experience of a mental void. (See my preceding article, Stress and the Internet.)
I have more faith in our readers, that you prefer to look in when something's significant and not be bothered the rest of the time. RSS notwithstanding, it's the policy with which we'll sit tight.
However, we are cooking up some pretty good new stuff. I promised earlier a state of the art discussion of experience design. It'll be here later this week. Turn on your newsreader and when you get the call, do read up.
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December 29, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 Like many in Southern California, last week I contracted a trilogy of viruses that took me out of action until now.
Thanks to TE co-author Paula Thornton for holding down the fort with her provocative postings. For the New Year, I'll be jumping back on the horse, bareback, with a critical review, "The State of Experience Design."
Meanwhile, I hope you're having a happy holiday season. Out here, we celebrated the Winter Solstice and Santa Lucia, two Scandinavian occasions of spiritual import I experienced in Sweden; personal experiences never to be forgotten. And already, it's the Baby New Year knocking at the door!
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October 5, 2006
Posted by Bob Jacobson
TOTAL EXPERIENCE!
The Total Experience team invites designers from every discipline to become Guest Authors and share in our conversation.
Experience design is eclectic. It explores and interacts with the full range of human phenomena. Culture. Technology. Behavior. Experience. Our practice encompasses a diversity of disciplines. We want to honor that diversity on Total Experience and facilitate its integration.
As a TE Guest Author, you can cover any topic in the experience design (not "user experience design") universe. Contribute an entry when you're motivated and able. Paula and I will review your entry and if it's of the quality that our readers expect of TE, we'll post it and credit you as its author. Or we'll suggest changes to improve its fit.
Also, when you become a Guest Author, you'll become a TE "Official Commentator." We hope you'll frequently reply to others' entries.
How's that for a low-maintenance way to converse with the global experience design community (and show up more frequently on Google)? Send us an email (the link is to the left, above our bios) telling us about your interests, background, and abilities. We'll reply promptly.
Thanks to those who've already submitted ideas and those who do in the future. We'll see you online!
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September 10, 2005
Posted by Bob Jacobson
View image
It’s time to relaunch Total Experience. Summer’s sloth is over, fiscal years are ready to begin, and it’s time to bring in the harvest.
Paula’s and my experience leads us to an unavoidable conclusion, one that has yet to percolate thoroughly within the experience-design community: to become a professional practice, and to be taken as the same, experience design needs constraints. So, how do we characterize “experience design,” its content and boundaries? What gives it value and meaning?
Here’s a definition we’re batting around:
Experience design is about the design of environments -- from conception through deployment – that convey an idea, engender an emotion, and catalyze action.
Put another way, for our purposes, immersive sensorial environments created by experience designers generate affects that result in effects. We are what we experience.
Paula and I propose a practical purpose for TE: to identify, critique, and recommend exceptional experience design that’s happening today. Here’s an indicative list of issues and cases that we hope to address over the next six months, things that matter to us (in no particular order):
* Designing Experience Design: Creating Our profession
* Interdisciplinary/holistic/synergistic/integrated Design
* Las Vegas: Our National Exhibition of Experience Design?
* Case Study: Designing the Washington Mutual Experience
* Case Study: Designing the Starbucks Experience
* The Evolution of the Shopping Mall
* Sports Arenas: Minimal Design, Maximal Experience
* Who Will Be The David Macauley of Experience Design?
* The Design and Consequence of Refugee Camps
* Macro-Experience Design: RAND’s “Arc” for Palestine
* Virtual Environments: The Skew of Military Patronage
* Envisioning the “Learning Environment,” 1880-2005
* The Coming Surgical Room
* Hell House: Sin, Redemption, and a Lot of Fake Blood
* Where Does Experience Design Reside: In the Plan, Its Implementation, or the Experiencer?
While you send us your comments, we’re going to get going, developing TE in practice while we develop experience design in theory. Welcome to the relaunch of Total Experience!
-- Bob Jacobson, Co-Author
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December 28, 2004
Posted by Bob Jacobson
Season's greetings to everyone! The TE Team wishes you the very best in 2005.
You may have noticed a slowdown in our postings. That's because we're taking a break from the hectic pace of late 2004 which affected each of us -- and so is much of the experience design world.
We're continuing to scan the frontiers and will be posting again with greater regularity as the new year approaches and finally arrives. In fact, our articles are going to be even better: more hands-on, more first-person by significant EDs, and more critical commentary.
Thanks for your loyalty to our conversation and please continue to tune in. Set your RSS readers for BUZZ!
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August 30, 2004
Posted by Bob Jacobson
 
Ethnographer Steve Portigal, innovation strategist Tom Mulhern (former principal, Conifer Research), and design theoretician and director Paula Thornton, i knovate will soon be joining me as coauthors of Total Experience. Their participation will add a whole new dimension to our blog, the ability to dialogue on issues. Moving away from the typical one-person point-of-view, TE will feature a multifaceted discussion in which, we hope, you too will take part. Welcome Steve, Tom, and Paula.
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