Emotional triggers
Experience design as an added value
Bachelor thesis in Interaction design written by
Anders Gran and Jacob Holst
in collaboration with Sony Ericsson.
K3, Malmö University spring semester 2006
Acknowledgements
First of all we would like to thank our advisor Livia Sunesson for all the great inputs and guidance throughout this project. We would also like to thank Anna Göjeryd at Sony Ericsson for superb feedback and advices together with patience with some of our wild ideas.
A warm thank you to all other Sony Ericsson employees that have helped us through the process with their expertise.
Lundinova also deserves gratitude helping us finalizing our first prototype.
Last but not least we would like to thank our beloved ones for not packing their suitcases when we started taking night shifts...
Abstract
We have in this thesis studied the area of emotive design a way to create a stronger user experience. Functionality and features still important to break new grounds and develop artifacts that can make our life easier, but the value of the product must be considered in a new way and communicated on new level, an emotional level.
We have within the thesis, in collaboration with Sony Ericsson, investigated how emotions can be evoked by personal tech-nologies. The human computer interaction is today so advanced that we might not always reflect over the impact the technology has on us. Our personal technology is getting more sophisti-cated which could allow stronger emotional bonds between the user and a device. What we have created is a concept for de-signing what we call emotional triggers.
To find out what triggers users’ emotions towards technology in order to create an added value, we have studied the relation-ship between users and their mobile phones. These studies in-cluded a workshop where we aimed to find out how users ceive their mobile phone and also how willing they are to per-sonalize it.
Furthermore we conducted trend research in Berlin and Milan to see international differences in mobile usage and also to compare it to other industries such as the fashion industry.
The result is a concept we call Selectíf. The concept is a set of design criteria for designing add-ons that are made to illustrate more emotional values of a technical device. The concept is based on the notion of a series of add-ons and we have also cre-ated a first prototype, called Selectíf no1 based on the criteria. The prototype focuses less on technology and more on a user’s emotional needs and illuminates how personal technologies can be designed to be more emotive and thereby create a stronger user experience.
Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. Background 2.1 Problem statement 2.2 Purpose 2.3 Delimitations 2.4 Time line
2.5 Criteria for success 2.6 About Sony Ericsson 3. Context
3.1 Relevant inputs
3.1.1 The iPod example 3.1.2 Auto emotive design
3.1.3 Narratives: What’s the story?
3.1.4 Identification, Who am I and who can I be?
3.1.5 Personalization
3.1.6 Collectability
3.1.7 Intimacy
3.2 Similar projects
3.2.1 Kiss communicator
3.2.2 Kramkudden/ Hugging pillow 3.2.3 Vibrating internal pager
3.2.4 eMoto
4. Interaction design framework
4.1 Experience design
4.2 Emotive Experience design 4.3 Trends
5. Methodology
5.1 Observation and Trend watching 5.1.1 Milan and Berlin
5.1.2 CeBit and Hannover
5.2 Workshop
5.3 Participatory Design 6. Design process
6.1 Initial gathering of information and brainstorming 6.2 Focus group workshop
6.3 Trend studies and visits to fairs
6.3.1 CeBit
6.3.2 Berlin and Milan
6.3.3 How these inputs affected the design choices 6.4 Concept and prototypes
6.4.1 The selectíf series 6.4.2 Prototype Selectíf no 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 5 5 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 15 16 17 20 20 20 21 21 21 23 23 25 26 26 27 28 29 31 34
6.4.3 User tests 7. Analysis
7.1 Common analysis
7.2 Anders Gran’s analysis 7.3 Jacob Holst’s analysis 8. Conclusion
9. Further Development 10. References
Appendix
1. Focus group workshop
2. Trend studies in Berlin and Milan
37 39 39 40 42 45 46 48 51
1. Introduction
Today’s mobile phones offer an increasing number of features. Mp3-players and digital cameras are standard in most phone-models. This race for technology is becoming more and more equal between competitors on the market. Thus, the overall user experience of the product is becoming more important in order to win the hearts of the users. The features might still be important as a guarantee for functionality, but an extended fo-cus on emotional values in personal technologies has a greater impact when trying to differentiate from competitors.
Trends play a big part when discussing how to create a stronger user experience, not only technology-trends but also trends in how users’ image of self is built and trends within the fashion industry.
In order to succeed in creating breathtaking user experiences, manufacturers of personal technologies must try to combine elements outside of the product, such as accessories and possi-bilities for personalization at an early stage, to be able to put a product in a context. This essay will focus on how Sony Ericsson can grow stronger in delivering user experiences by using what we would like to call Emotional triggers.
2. Background
2.1 Questions / Problem statement 2.1.1 Jacob Holst’s thesis question
How has the impact of experiences changed the role of the fea-tures and functions?
-The Importance of experience design. 2.1.2 Anders Gran’s thesis question
How are intimacy and attachment connected to the user experi-ence of personal technologies and how can this be obtained through personalization of them?
I want to investigate how users' bonds to personal technologies are created by personalization and how they affect the overall user experience.
2.2 Purpose
The main goal with the project is to inquire into how Sony Er-icsson’s products can be given an added value from a consumer perspective. This added value can be created in any way as long as it gives the product new dimensions and increases its value in the moment of purchase. Our constrains were that we could not change a mobile phone in any way, thus our challenge lies in finding what area to investigate in order to find possible so-lutions without interfering with software or hardware design at a production level.
2.3 Delimitations
In a project of this width we had to do some delimitation so that we could be able to specify the part that we felt was most im-portant to consider in the field of experience design. The task as it was given from Sony Ericsson was limited in such a way that we had no possibility to change the design of the actual mobile phones. Our project should focus on how the product can be enhanced after design of software and hardware has been made. Thus, the area of which we can work is within add-ons and accessories, as well as how the product is communicated.
We considered the task to be a broad assignment and a project with opportunities to achieve our goal from many different de-sign perspectives. The possibilities were to create a new and interesting display design, design an add-on for the cell phone or look at the overall experience design.
In addition to the work, the main purpose changed a bit since Sony Ericsson showed interest in our academic report. Because of the discussions with Sony Ericsson and what we meant the impact experiences design could have on the project made the theoretical part of our work more centered.
2.4 Time Line
In order to describe the width of our work we created a time line. This model has also helped us visualizing to ourselves how we have made our priorities.
ÿ
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿ ÿÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿ ÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿ
ÿÿ ÿÿ ÿ ÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿÿ ÿÿ ÿÿ ÿ
ÿ ÿÿ ÿÿ
presentation redesign Concept development Trend watching prototype design Prototype buildingE s s a y
user testpreparing for exhibition defining assignment
ÿ Inithial gathering of info
We have simply placed actions performed during the process along a week-based timeline and emphasized those who have been conducted over longer periods than others.
2.5 Criteria for success
In order to consider this project a success we have to have at least one prototype that can communicate the importance of emotional design and experience design, rather than features and functions.
Also we intend to through this thesis be able to exemplify how Sony Ericsson can work with experience design.
2.6 About Sony Ericsson
The project was initiated by the product-planning department at Sony Ericsson in Lund, Sweden, as a way for them to investi-gate how to enhance the user experience on mobile phones after production is done.
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications is a young company founded in 2001 by Ericsson and Sony.
The company Sony Ericsson is located around the world has become a feature-strong phone manufacturer within the few years of existence.
3. Context
For this project we got inspiration and inputs from similar pro-jects for both the main concept and our physical prototype. Also we present inputs that has been important to the process and our interpretation of experience- and emotive design. These subjects are explained further in chapter 4. The project’s main discipline has been experience design, but since this is a subject that is a culmination of many other disciplines the project in-cludes both interaction design and emotive design. Because of the different areas included in this work, we had to look for inspiration in many different projects and researches. With ideas and inputs from various ways of thinking and creating, the final product was built. Some projects had more influences on our work than others but overall it is the idea to deliberately create an experience that has been our main focus throughout the project.
3.1 Relevant inputs
The following examples of inputs work as themes from which we have gained inspiration to our project. These different themes target different aspects that we find relevant in creating a strong user experience.
3.1.1 The iPod example
The way to separate products of the personal technology we believe is through the user experience, the expressions it com-municates and the experiences it gives the user. The best exam-ple of this is the iPod1. We believe that the success of the iPod
depends on tree things, a strong user experience combined with a strong brand and clever marketing.
These are important factors for the success of device more im-portant then technical specifications. To understand the impor-tance of experience design the iPod is a good example.
An article on the web discussed the reasons for the iPod success and the participants are making some really good points of Ex-perience design regarding the iPod and its competitors on the market.
1Apple computers. (2006) Apple- iPod family http://www.apple.com/ipod (2006-05-13)
Picture 01. iPod, more than a
In the discussion the participant’s gives input of what it is in the iPod that gives them a good experience and why Apple can maintain its dominance on the market2.
One point of view is that it is the pride of owning the latest iPod and being able to show it to your friends, that makes the key component. Also the fashion statement and the range of serv-ices as the iPod/iTunes/iTunes Music Store is given apprecia-tion. One of the participants in the discussion believe it is iden-tification from consumers that is the sweet spot another claims the possibility to buy his gadgets that belongs to the same fam-ily makes him loyal to the brand.
All these are important factors for the success of the product and contribute to a good experience. Still there is no new pio-neering feature that comes with this product. We believe that this illustrates how experience design rather than new features is gaining importance today regarding personal technologies. 3.1.2 Autoemotive design
Ford Motor Company’s head of design J. Mays, shared, in an interview by Dike Blair for www.thing.net3, many interesting
opinions about how and why the emotional content and design are important.4
On Ford Motor they are trying to create products that people desire rather than rationalize. He also means that you buy for emotional reasons and then rationalize your purchase to your friends. Mays also describe that everything you touch, smell, or hear has to be in line with the brand, but at the same time communicate and be an experience of a high quality.
The car has been produced for our common requirements and needs but lately the industry has realized the opportunities for creating something more in the design process by adding an emotional design.
“Architecture and design forms have always been driven by func-tion and by the desire to express the identity of both the user and the maker; but highly sophisticated market research has increasingly honed the specifics of the self expressive and emotional benefits of
2 Spool, J. (2006)
http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2006/03/21/feature-design-or-experience-design (2006-05-08)
3 Blair, D. (1999) Interview with J. Mays
http://www.thing.net/~lilyvac/writing23.html (2006-05-09) 4 Blair, D. (1999) Interview with J. Mays
products and integrated them into the design program at the concep-tual level.”5
In the article the VW’s new beetle is set as a good example for the emotional design program.
“The car has grabbed consumers' attention, it evokes simplicity and optimism, and it taps the emotions of those who lived the 60's and those who only imagine them.”6
3.1.3 Narratives: What’s the story?
When looking how narratives are used to make a design or a product more interesting and the experience of it more personal Solomon et al describes this in Consumer behavior “One method of
conveying product information is through a narrative or a story. Much of the social information that an individual acquires is repre-sented in memory this way. […] Narratives persuade people to con-struct a mental representation of the information they are viewing.”7
We agree with this and thinking how it might be implemented, we can se similarities with how identification works. When looking at how watchmakers Omega and Rolex have created classical watches with connections to marine themes and Breit-ling uses aviation as the use-model for their watches8. These
products are designed to tell the time, but also work as triggers in order to evoke memories and make the user recall previous events. These events might not only be personally experienced. Memories can also be attached to movies or historical events. First Rolex and later Omega has tight connections to movie-agent James Bond and play a big part in the films. This triggers recalling of fictional escapades when considering using one. In our project this way of connecting a product to a context be-comes relevant as we want to find new ways for Sony Ericsson to address users. By using narrative when designing products and using attributes that through the story they are telling, in-stantly are connected with pleasant previous events, a greater impact can be obtained regarding overall user experiences.
5 Blair, D. (1999) Interview with J. Mays
http://www.thing.net/~lilyvac/writing23.html (2006-05-09) 6 Blair, D. (1999) Interview with J. Mays
http://www.thing.net/~lilyvac/writing23.html (2006-05-09) 7Solomon et al 2002, page 76
8Breitling official web pagehttp://www.breitling.com/en (2006-05-09)
Picture 02. Screenshot from
Breitling’s official website; Tightly connected to avia-tion.
3.1.4 Identification, who am I and who can I be?
Identification is becoming more and more important in a world where images of successful individuals are visible almost eve-rywhere. The image of self is in many cases a crucial factor when buying clothes and accessories, as well as when choosing personal technologies to adopt. Norman exemplifies this by comparisons to the advertisement industry.
“Take any product and show it alongside happy, contended people. Show people doing things that an intended purchaser is likely to fan-tasize about, such as romantic vacations, skiing, exotic locations, eat-ing in foreign lands. Show famous people, people who serve as role models or heroes to the customers, to induce them, trough association, a sense of worthiness.” 9
Norman continues by giving examples from the fashion indus-try:
“In clothing fashion, one can have clothes that are neat and trim or baggy and non-descript, each deliberately inducing a different image of self”10
His continued discussion involves brands’ importance to the values communicated. He points out that any recognized com-pany’s logo evokes other people’s valuations.
Another big influence regarding identification is reference groups. According to Solomon et al, a reference group has an impact on the individual’s behavior, evaluations and aspira-tions and can be either actually existing or imaginary.11
Solo-mon et al collect three different reference groups’ influences on an individual; Informal influence, Utilitarian influence and Value-expressive influence. The informal influence is exempli-fied with an individual that seeks information about brands from expert-groups or professionals who work with such a product.
When discussing utilitarian influence, the authors describe it as a choice made for suing peers that the individual socially inter-acts with every day.
The final category, Value-expressive influence, is the feel of that a product might affect the image of the individual- “The
indi-vidual feels that those who purchase or use a particular brand possess the characteristics that he or she would like to have.” 12
9Norman, D.A. 2004, page 54
10Norman, D.A. 2004, page 54
11Solomon et al 2002, page 303
Even though much of this discussion is within a paradigm of marketing, we find it relevant for our project. When designing as well as when marketing knowledge of the user or consumer is important. As designers we share this particular interest in the user with the marketers. We feel that the sociological as-pects regarding how individuals conceive themselves are be-coming more and more important in order to create an experi-ence that differs from other.
3.1.5 Personalization.
There are several examples of how personalization has been used. Watchmaker Swatch used to have watches which the user could change appearance and looks of easily. Different dials and such were available and new models arrived in a high pace.13
Also sport-clothing manufacturer Nike has created a series of customizable shoes with the label Nike Id.14
Today there are several different ways for a user to customize things. A lot of different companies with totally different prod-ucts offer personalization-possibilities. This opens doors for us-ers to on their own create an experience of a product or service. Nike, as mentioned above, makes sport clothing and shoes and have launched a service where the customer is allowed to re-design shoes on a web site and then get their own, unique pair sent home. The process of self creating a design using their templates works well in giving a unique touch to the shoe and limiting the risk of finding another similar pair of shoes. Still Nike has made limitations in what can be changed in order to still have some control over the design; after all it is still a Nike shoe.
When using this method for customization regarding personal technology there are not as many alternatives as within other industries but there is one strong example – The iPod mp3-player as described above. When buying an iPod today, you can get your name engraved and there are also thousands of differ-ent cases and bags for them. This is a rather simple level of per-sonalization, but still it is a good example of how a product gets unique without major changes. But a relationship is not purely based on looks. Neither can one say that just because a gadget remembers (or carries) your name, you haven’t necessarily got a relationship to it. Many factors does affect the comprehension of an object and to get a true notion of belonging, affection and such the product need to be more than a problem-solving unit 13Swatch, Swatch official web pagehttp://www.swatch.com/index_flash.php
(2006-05-01)
14Nike Id, Nike iD http://nikeid.nike.com (2006-05-09)
Picture 04. Screenshot of
Nike iD’s online personal-ization tool
Picture 03. Swatch’s playful
or a beautiful piece of technology. It has to be intimate. Intimacy usually evolves over some time, through the creating of memo-ries and through loyalty.
Loyalty when thinking of technology is in our eyes equal to good functionality. A product that does what its supposed and doesn’t break or crash when used will be appreciated as loyal. All above can and should be considered when dealing with how a piece of personal technology is communicated. Even at first glance a potential user must be able to get a glimpse of a possible relationship with the product. Intimacy should be communicated at first use, thus a user must feel that the prod-uct either improves intimacy with the users peers or can pro-vide intimacy itself through interaction. When dealing with intimacy parallels will be drawn to human to human interac-tion and relainterac-tionships As well as to studies of how trends of collectibles arises and why people get attached to different things.
This input is very important to our concept, as our aim is to cre-ate an added value, which very well might be obtained through personalization. We believe that the customization possibilities of today need to be extended further, beyond the frontier of putting a user’s name on a device.
3.1.6 Collectability
To collect things, may it be soccer cards, action figures or stamps, has had a strong impact on entire communities. Poke-mon15 has conquered the world, over and over. We believe that
this dominance was obtained because of the trans-medial wide-ness of the concept. Pokemon is not only characters in cartoons; they are trading cards, videogames and everything in between. But these arguments are not explaining the collectible-need within human beings. Humans tend to compete and a collection is highly comparable to other collections. This is probably not the first thing a collector replies on the question why they are collecting certain objects.
We believe that a collection becomes very personal in a sense that it is an individually constructed thing. The collected items themselves are not individually crafted but the combination of them and thereby the role of each item is often unique. Each object tends to have a story attached to it, how the collector got it etcetera. The narrative elements together with a context and relation to other items in the collection, eventually builds a re-lationship between the collector and the collectibles.
15Pokémon, The official pokémon websitehttp://www.pokemon.com/ (2006-05-09)
Picture 05. Screenshot from
Pokémon’s website. Figu-rines, trading cards and mu-sic, it’s all there.
In many ways this does not differ from personalization of other objects. We believe that the process of customization and per-sonalization itself builds a special attachment to the object and through this attachment or relationship a unique and strong user experience emerges. This gives this area a certain relevance to our process. We feel that collectability should be considered in order to create a better user experience.
3.1.7 Intimacy
A relationship to an object requires a need. Needs can vary, but we have divided them into two main categories; Functional needs and Emotional needs. A functional need is often solved by different functional features. This is something the mobile phone industry works a lot with. New and clever solutions to everyday problems and situations are invented every day. We believe though, that the real challenge lies in satisfying emo-tional needs based on intimacy and affection. There is a distinc-tion in how to define the different needs. Funcdistinc-tional needs are somewhat easier to generalize whereas emotional needs might be more individual. In order to evoke affection, a relationship must be built on deeper emotions than plain functional satis-faction. Norman says “Perhaps the objects that are the most
inti-mate and direct are those that we construct ourselves, hence the popularity of home-made crafts, furniture and art.”16
By highlighting this quotation we do not suggest that a de-signer should leave it all in the hands of a user, but rather be aware of the possibility to allow users to do modifications that are not entirely pre-fabricated. The designer could try to leave a ‘blank space’ in the design where users’ individualization is possible. In our project intimacy is not only based on the proc-ess of individualization of a product, but also with intimate ex-periences and memories of such evoked by either one of the above stated headlines; Narratives, Identification, Personaliza-tion, Collectability and Intimacy.
3.2 Similar projects
The following projects have influenced and inspired us for the final outcome of this project. They are created with technology to communicate emotions in different ways. We have used these projects to see how other people has worked with emotions but add our own thoughts about creating physical connections to the beauty of nature. All of the following examples feel relevant to our concept and prototype that will be described in chapter 6. 16Norman, D.A. 2004, page 48
3.2.1 Kiss communicator By IDEO
The design firm IDEO have through technology with sensors and using wireless network built a prototype called the kiss communicator. The prototype has been presented in a paper named Experience prototyping, by Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri at IDEO.17
Similar to our idea two devices are linked together wirelessly. Through the devices you can send messages that symbols a kiss or a touch by blowing into the device, which transforms the breath to signals represented by a pattern of light on the corre-sponding device. This project shows many similarities to our prototype Selectíf no1. We have looked at this project since it, in a good way, exemplifies how motions may be transferred over distance. The device’s look has no obvious connection to its purpose something we will focus more on.
3.2.2 Kramkudden / Hugging pillow
At an exhibit on Formargruppen18 in Malmö, Interactive
Insti-tute19 presented an artifact that act as intermediary closeness
through a pair of pillows. By hugging one of the pillows a vis-ual pattern on the receiving pillow gets activated. In this way one can mediate ones feelings in a wordless communication. The pillows is basically targeting the same area as the Kiss communicator as well as our prototype; transmitting emotions. In this case we found it interesting partly because of the obvi-ous connection to our project, but also as kind of an opposite since it is more likely to be used in one location rather than on the go. Also we can look at their use of the pillow as a way to solve the problem of representation and medium. Our proto-type needs to have representational qualities not to interfere with the communication itself. This is something Interactive Institute has worked on in this example, by choosing the pillow as a medium they have created a product instantly invites hug-ging. The only problem might be their choice of letting a feeling of touch become represented as visual patterns. A problem they share with the IDEO-project.
17Buchenau, M., Fulton Suri, J., 2000
18A swedish arts and crafts collective, www.formargruppen.se
19 Interactive Institute, The interactive institute: Press
http://w3.tii.se/press.asp?page=item&template=intranyhet2.asp&iDocumentID=49 0&press=o (2006-05-11)
Picture 07. Interactive
Insti-tute’s interactive Hugging pillow
Picture 06. The
3.2.3 Vibrating Internal Pager (V.I.P)
This was more of an idea rather than a product, created by Lucy Kimbell described in Design Noir, written by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. The basic concept was that the product would very much like an ordinary pager with a vibrating function. If you met someone you liked, you could give her your number and the device would vibrate, giving you a gentle buzz when the person gave you a call.20
The concept has some similarities to our prototype. V.I.P., though differs since it is only one-way communication, while our idea is based on the notion of a dialogue. It also differs from the above-mentioned projects since it uses vibrations instead of light as message-carrier. V.I.P, moreover, does not seem to offer any way for the sender to affect the vibrations transmitted to the receiver. This might limit the possibilities of variation of the emotions sent. The V.I.P can be used in our project as an exam-ple of how to work with touch on the receiving side in commu-nication.
3.2.4 eMoto
This project was conducted by Kristina Höök, Petra Sundström and Anna Ståhl, from SICS21 and DSV22 at Stockholm
Univer-sity (KTH) in Kista, Sweden. The eMoto was presented in a pa-per named A foundation for emotional expressivity.
The goal was to investigate possibilities to extend the notion of emotions when using instant messaging and sms:s. The project explored how graphics can be used to communicate emotions. Simplified, the eMoto-application is based on regular sms written with a stylus, but with the addition that the user would use a special stylus that would respond to movement through an accelerometer. When moving the stylus combined with dif-ferent levels of pressure, the background of the message changes. Using different colors, patterns and animations, the meaning of the text would change.23
Like many of the examples we presented above, the eMoto is using graphic elements as carrier of emotions. We find it rele-vant to our project because of its attention to transmitting emo-tions and not only information.
20Dunne, A and Raby, F 2001, page 61
21Swedish Institute of Computer Science
22Department of System Sciences
23Höök et al, 2005
Picture 08. Background
4. Interaction design framework
Since our assignment for this project was to create an added value for Sony Ericsson’s products without interfering with the final product. We used our interaction design backgrounds as a foundation on which to build the project. This helped us to reach our goals and answer the questions at issue.
Thoughts we had in the early stages of the project lead us in on emotive design and experience design and emotive design in particular. We wanted trough experience design give a product a higher value and create the experience trough emotive design to talk to the user on a emotional level. This recently defined disciplines we felt was a good foundation for the work that had to be done. The nature of experience design also gave us the opportunity to design with a user-centered perspective without interfering with the already made product. It also gave us the possibilities to combine all the other interrelated disciplines that would be integrated through the process.
“While everything, technically, is an experience of some sort, there is something important and special to many experiences that make them worth discussing. In particular the elements that contribute to supe-rior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which make them designable.”24
By designing for emotions we could match the project with the major trends of today and create a concept that was for the contemporary market. Through emotive design we wanted to create a good experience that could interact with such an ad-vanced technical product as the mobile phone, on a higher emotional level than it does today.
Some issues we had to consider with this discipline is that the experience can change, based on the behavior of the user;
“Which attributes are most appropriate, Balanced with those that are possible to create with the system, resources, budget, or schedule.“25
Experience Design became our main perspective and focus to create a successful project but first of all we had to get an un-derstanding for this new discipline. By reading Nathan She-droff26 we got some help defining it to ourselves.
24Shedroff, N. 2001, page 2
25Shedroff, N. 2001, page 2
We have also gained a lot of useful knowledge regarding expe-rience design by looking at artifacts, which we could analyze out of the experience design perspective.
4.1 Experience design
Experience Design is a term that can be found over a wide range of new media. Through our studies in interaction design we have come in contact with the subject when working in dif-ferent projects. Web designers have understood and studied user experience for a long time and now the technology indus-try also starts to focus more on experiences and how these are communicated.
During this project we have investigated and discussed how much impact the experience actually gives and why it is so im-portant for a company to communicate a good experience to-gether with their products.
We believe it is hard to define what experience design is and what it does. We have through this project encountered a col-lection of definitions of the subject. We think all of them have some good points because of the wide range in many different design areas.
"Experience Design is an emerging paradigm, a call for inclusion: it calls for an integrative practice of design that can benefit all designers, including those who work in the new, interactive media"27
The best way to really get an understanding of the subject is to look at examples from real-life, through case studies and sto-ries.
To explain why thinking of experience design in a design proc-ess is so important we started to look at the consumers of today. From various articles and reports we got a sense of what the market looks like from the experience perspective.
“Experience design is not something that is limited to designers, nor is it something that is limited to web-based experience. If a design is "inclusive" then it must in some way evolve and change as it is being used. The danger is that the designer sees him or herself as the source of design, rather than seeing their potential audience as the true source of design. The audience must be proactive in the design process, not reactive:” [...] "The idea of designing experiences invites all par-ticipants into a world of authentic narrative creation and
preserva-27Jacobson, B., (2000). About Experience design
tion, the human ecology of interactivity, and the private and public mobility of our mind, body and spirit."28
4.2 Emotive Experience design
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi gives in an interview to WGSN29 his opinion of the consumers of today together with
a brief of the market.
The information overload of today has led the consumers to be more intelligent and well informed. He means that the market has changed to be ruled by the consumers.
“When I first started out in the industry, brands were king. For a while, retailers were kings. Then the media had their turn in the spot-light. But now – make no mistake – the consumers are in charge. They know what they want: and tough luck for us if we don't give it to them."30
Roberts believes that the brand must engage the consumers and use the dialog as a tool to seduce them. By using the figure he calls the “Viral consumer”, which means that consumers talk a lot about products and ‘spread the word’.
To reach the intelligent consumers of today also Roberts means that a brand needs to talk to them on an emotional level and discover what he calls “The lost art of story telling”. Never before have emotion been more valuable, a brand need to use this to reach their costumers. In combination with storytelling one can trigger the consumers emotions.
Our own reflections of his words are that the experience can be generated from the emotions of the consumer, by adding a nar-rative the consumer can identify with the product. This is an effective way to speak to the more intelligent consumers and make them help you, since they can do a great deal for your brand through the mouth-to-mouth effect.
As for the technology today many other industries are using Experience design to interact with the consumers. In the fashion industry it is important for different brands to communicate experiences with their products. By using a narrative and add-28Alger, B (2004). Design: What is Experience Design?
http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/archives/000368.html (2006-05-14)
29Worth Global Style Network, WGSN http://www.wgsn.com(2006-05-01)
30Tungate, M. (2006) Interview with Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi http://www.wgsn.com(2006-05-01)
ing products to a context consumers easily identifies with a product and creates a sensation of the product itself.
Consumers are today seen as smarter and faster than before. Regarding the personal technology they know indeed how to handle the different media that is involved in our everyday life. Kevin Roberts also sees the advertising industry as an aging industry that in many cases have unsuccessfully kept the pace with the consumers. The market is inundated with products and the consumer brand relation is sometimes very absent. In an article in eWeek31, Andreas Pfeiffer claims that style
mat-ters and is just as important as the features, the user experience very much comes through style and elegance and that fancy packaging isn’t good enough and we agree. But we don’t think it is only the style and elegance or the fact that the product is easy to use and that makes it to a success.
“When technology achieves something desirable without being in your face, when it know how to integrate itself into you wishes and desires without distracting from them, that's when technology lives up to its potential. Unfortunately it's not that simple to get there.”32
We share with Pfeiffer a belief that cutting edge technology might be important to brake limitations and be able to answer the users higher demands, but that it is through our senses and urges for things one can make a difference for the desire of a product. It’s not just about the look it’s the way we look at things then a more emotive design is the key.
4.3 Trends
Trends overall have played a big part in our project. We have been trying to find the nature of trends in order to see what area we should focus on when designing and also what potential us-ers within the area requests. To ourselves we needed to get an overview in how trends arise and also in which directions user or consumer behavior is changing.
Today the consumption by members of the community is not as frequently based on actual economical needs as on more emo-tional ones, Jukka Gronow33 argues that “Many analyses of
mod-31 Pfeiffer, A. Why features doesn’t matter any more, eWeek, 23 January 2006 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1914495,00.asp (2006-05-12) 32Pfeiffer, A. Why features doesn’t matter any more, eWeek, 23 January 2006 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1914495,00.asp (2006-05-12) 33Gronow, J. 1997
ern society share the idea that some crucial change has taken place in the action orientation of the modern consumer. A new hedonistic con-sumer has come into being, whose demands are no longer regulated by an ‘economy of needs’ but by an ‘economy of desire and dreams’, or the longing for something new and unexperienced.”34
Parallels can be drawn between Gronow’s idea and what an-thropologist Ted Polhemus calls ”the decorated monkey”, the humans’ need for adjusting visual appearance as expressions of individuality or group coherence.35 This is particularly visible
when looking at trends within the fashion industry. Clothes with a worn look and shorter life-time has been on the market for some time and is in constant struggle with our economy of needs but satisfying to our economy of desires and needs. We decorate our self to fit role models and reference groups, with costly efforts. Erik Sandelin and Magnus Torstensson exemplify those efforts very well in their master thesis Digital peacock tails
– Designing Post-Optimal Electronic Attire.
”An everyday example of these complexities is that of high-heeled
shoes. Although initially designed for male horsemen to make riding with stirrups easier, high-heeled shoes have become a strong, though ambiguous, symbol of femininity by impeding walking and running. The hampered ability to move about or escape on foot suggests de-pendence, submission and vulnerability. On the other hand many women wearing high heels feel powerful, proud, dignified and sexy.”36
This example clearly illustrates the human beings’ tendency to go very far to communicate an image of self and to attract peers. The sole image of self is also important within trends in how personal technologies are perceived. The mobile phone has over the last few years moved a bit in different directions from its origin as a voice-communication tool towards being a port-able music library, digital camera or gaming device. However these trends have all connections to a certain function or feature and to people that identify themselves though use of a given technology. There is again a gap between the problem-solving nature of many features and the increasing need for users to communicate their image of self and their desires for identifica-tion.
To actually predict trends is hard, maybe impossible.
34Gronow, J. 1997, page 74
35Polhemus 1996, Described in Sandelin and Torstensson 2001, page 16
Even so, Solomon et al37 claims that trend cycles can be
pre-dicted and illustrates this by comparing the digital pet Tama-gotchi 38with the global Pokémon trend39; “The stories of the
Ta-magotchi or the Pokémon show how quickly a consumer craze can catch on globally. Although the longevity of a particular style can range from a month to a century, fashions tend to flow in a predictable sequence.“40
We may be able to agree that when looking back at fashion trends patterns might be visible and even cyclic tendencies, but the predictability is very limited which Göran Pagels-Fick sup-ports in his book Business intelligence41. In a chapter discussing
how to work with predicting future, he claims that the main problem with using cycles for predicting upcoming changes is that it is impossible to estimate how reasonable or reliable such a prognosis might be.
This is also illustrated with today’s ongoing trend with flowery patterns.42 They might look like those of the sixties and
seven-ties, but when comparing them you will actually see that there are differences in how the connections to nature are made. Such differences might be caused by many things, fashion is in many ways connected to our society43. This means that in order to
predict evolving fashion-trends one must look at trends in in-dustries that only remotely are connected to the fashion indus-try. The same is true to the technology-industry as well. New materials and technologies are developed and this affects the production process as well as possibilities for new interpreta-tions. This means that even if fashion and trends would be cy-clic they would not look the same twice, because of other areas affect the industry.
When we were discussing our areas for investigating and searching for trends, we tried to keep a broad mind in order to see connections between fashion and personal technologies. Not only trends in how personal technologies were connected through jewelry and cases but also how people feel about their technology in a more personal way.
37Solomon et al 2002, page 493
38 Tamagotchi planet, Tamagotchi history in a nut shell http://www.mimitchi.com/tamaplus/tama_history.shtml
39Pokémon, The official pokémon websitehttp://www.pokemon.com/ (2006-05-09)
40Solomon et al 2002, page 493
41Pagels-Fick, G 1999, page 115
42More on the flowery patterns in chapter 6
5. Methodology
Concept development, brainstorm and research
We choose to use a method for concept development described by Synovate Temo to get started and generate ideas.
To create an added value for a mobile phone we had to look at the market for accessories, for phones in fashion and gadgets in general. We analyzed forums on the Internet and looked at ex-isting ideas to generate something new and innovative.
After collecting references we sat down to generate our own ideas and concepts. We had a goal to come up with 10 new con-cepts every week that later had to be evaluated and criticized. The Method of Concept Development is developed to involve the market and the user in the design process. It is a dynamic process where the ranges of products on the Internet and con-sumer insight are used through out the creative process.
The method is based on research and idea generation through Internet. There are a lot of advantages in this method. This is a fast and cost effective way get an insight on the global market and consumer attitudes. When analyzing the existing products and consumer insights one gets an instant feedback to generate creative ideas for a project and at the same time get information about what has already been done.
This is based on a concept development workshop for market-ing. It is a dynamic process where the consumer insights are used as inputs in the creative process.44
5.1 Observations and Trend watching
To gain inputs to the project we conducted a workshop and went visiting CeBit in Hannover as well as Berlin and Milan. Each of these inputs played a big part in the shaping of our concept.
5.1.1 Milan and Berlin
To get an international touch on our concept and thoughts, we went on a trip in Europe. The goal was to gain insight in of what’s new on the market and compare two of the biggest me-tropolis in Europe- Berlin and Milan. Primary we aimed to ob-serve how experiences were communicated in the fashion in-dustry in comparison to the mobile inin-dustry. Secondary we wanted to observe what was going on in fashion, what do the 44Synovate Temo, Concept development workshop
costumers ask for and how it can be combined with technology. Finally we were looking at social factors and how people did their social communication of their every day life. The analysis of the research-trip gave us some indications that helped us to create a project that address the consumers of today.
5.1.2 CeBit and Hannover
To understand what is going on and what trends there are in the technology industry we went to the Hannover based trade fair CeBIT. Our main goal was to look into the new products of technology, what the mobile industry focus on and how the ex-periences were communicated to the market. The CeBIT fare with its half of a million visitors is one of the biggest fairs in the world.
5.2 Workshop
Our goal with this workshop was to get a glimpse of potential users´opinions. The questions we asked aimed to highlight the relations and thoughts the participants had to their cell phones. Our aim was to investigate if there was an interest from the participants to individualize their things and communicate their personal statements through a gadget rather than getting concrete ideas and suggestions for the design. We were also in-terested to find patterns of how people communicated them-selves, what kind of metaphor that was used to describe a per-sonality.
The workshop contained some demographical questions to help us describe the participator. We had created three exercises that were presented one by one. The participants were given blank sheets to answer our questions together with different materials to work with during the exercises.
5.3 Participatory design
We wanted to involve potential users in the project at an early stage. Participatory design may not be seen as a specific method but rather as a way to incorporate various different methods. Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman argue that participatory de-sign does not only require users in the dede-sign process, but also designers in the use-context.45 This was more or less the
strat-egy of our workshop. The discussions that occurred during the 45Löwgren, Stolterman 1998, page 154
workshop were not all initiated by us but also by users. We at-tended the discussions as users, not designers.
On Webcredible’s web site46, we have found a good description
that fits well with how we used user participation in our pro-ject;
"Participatory design does not just ask users opinions on design is-sues, but actively involves them in the design and decision-making processes."47
They continue by explaining how it can be used;
"Participatory design is usually used within a mini-project to gener-ate prototypes that feed into an overall project's design process. An example would be a participatory design workshop in which develop-ers, designers and users work together to design an initial prototype. This initial prototype would then feed into a more traditional design process."48
We did not intend to get a prototype from our sessions with user, but rather thoughts and attitudes. But the quotation above works well as an explanation of our activities.
46Webcredible, Web usability & accessability consultancy http://www.webcredible.co.uk(2006-05-10)
47Webcredible, User-centered design 6 methods
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/user-centere d-design.shtml (2006-05-10)
48Webcredible, User-centered design 6 methods
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/user-centere d-design.shtml (2006-05-10)
6 The design process
Due to the width of the assignment given, we needed to find a way to think wide but at the same time continuously narrow our concepts down in order not to loose our direction. The first weeks we generated a large amount of concepts.
These concepts were merely short descriptions of ideas that needed to be developed further. Since our aim was to have two concepts when finished we had to start narrowing down the majority of the concepts. However this was a tough challenge due to the number of concept and ideas. We started by selecting 10 ideas that we elaborated a bit further on in order to find out which two to choose.
6.1 Initial gathering of information and brainstorming
Having to deal with almost total freedom regarding what to do, as long as it was some kind of an add-on and not a brand new phone, we started off by looking at what existed in terms of accessories. This included mobile phone accessories as well as key pendants and other similar gadgets. Basically we went out in Malmö city finding out what people did to extend or person-alize different items. We went to different stores that were sell-ing various cell phone-jewelry. Most of this process, though, was spent on the Internet browsing for gadgets trying to find both inspiration and different trends. We spent a lot of time on web pages such as Prylfeber49 and Engadget50. These pages were
great as inspiration since they were frequently updated and had their tentacles reaching out to almost every other similar web page giving us opportunities to move deeper into the vast sea of new gadgets. A big advantage with this way of information gathering was that these pages do not focus on cellular phones. When looking solely at mobile phone accessories one will easily fall into line and have a hard time thinking outside the box. Numerous of our early concepts grew from ideas we got from gadget-sites. Among them is a line of organically inspired add-ons. A living plant attached to a key-chain inspired this idea. The little plant got us thinking about the strength in the huge unpredictability with living organisms and also the need to take care of them. This has been artificially done before. The Tama-gotchi, first introduced by Bandai in 1996, was the world’s first
49Prylfeber, Nyheter för prylvänner http://www.prylfeber.se/ (2006-05-09)
virtual pet. Over 40 million units were sold worldwide accord-ing to the website Tamagotchi planet.51
The idea of the virtual pet came from Bandai-employee Aki Maita that needed a companion that suited her small apartment and busy life-style.
We believe that the Tamagotchi became such a success mainly because of the strong connection to natural behavior. It needed some amount of pampering as it simulated the life cycle of a real animal. The Tamagotchi was also designed to be carried around and to fit into a busy life, but still demand some atten-tion. We started to elaborate on creating a living version of the Tamagotchi, removing the last elements of artificialness. The plant is one way to let people shape a living organism by taking care. Lately miniature ant farms have been produced to lighten up a dull desk at an office, which also could be a possibility to bring a pet everywhere. This product was presented at Think geek’s web site.52
The latter example does of course raise ethical questions whether or not this is appropriate. These examples have served a purpose for us to keep the purely organic in mind. The human fascination for flowers etcetera is also discussed by Donald A. Norman in his book Emotional Design. He claims that humans tend to be attracted to flowers due to co-evolution. Flowers and fruits developed to suit animals and humans in order to spread their seeds as well as animals have developed to enjoy fruits and flowers.53
Besides the series of organic ideas that derived from the pure information gathering, we spent a lot of time discussing how gadgets are used to solve everyday problems. This did not lead to any big ideas, but it worked as a way to keep our minds open and to prevent us from putting all focus in one direction. In the end we had collected a large amount of ideas and minor con-cepts. We categorized them into different themes and evaluated them. The themes we divided them into were; Narrative
ele-ments, collectibles, organic, functional, stateele-ments, personalization, emotional. These declaration of these themes or headlines was a
way for us to navigate ourselves through the different concepts and to find in what direction we wanted to proceed.
51 Tamagotchi planet, Tamagotchi history in a nut shell http://www.mimitchi.com/tamaplus/tama_history.shtml 52 Think geek, Antworks - Space age ant habitat
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/6fd6/ (2006-05-09) 53Norman, D.A 2004, page 66
6.2 Focus group workshop54
Since we had many thoughts about how personalization could be offered we soon found out that we needed some deeper knowledge about how potential users felt about modifying their mobile phones. We discussed different methods for inves-tigating the attitudes of our users, but decided on conducting a workshop allowing people to freely explore their attitudes on personalization of personal technologies.
We invited nine persons aged 22 to 35 with the only demand that they would bring their own mobile phones.
We had prepared questions that were intended to investigate the users’ attitudes towards their current cellular phones. We also created three practical assignments where we asked the us-ers to communicate their mood and pus-ersonality as well as to do an optional modification of their mobile phone. These practical exercises could be performed either through drawing or by building using the material we had brought. We let the users present and discuss their creations after every exercise.
A lot of interesting results could be extracted from the exercise. When asked to describe themselves four of the nine participants used nature as a metaphor. One user described herself as a tree with strong roots and flowered top while another described herself as a vase of tulips. Donald A. Norman writes in his book
Emotional design, that humans share a long part of the evolution
with plants. He also claims “The human love of sweet tastes and
smells and of bright, highly saturated colors probably derives from this co-evolution of mutual dependence between people and plants.” 55
This relationship between humans and plants is important to consider when designing.
Since this was our first workshop we soon noticed that the par-ticipants did most of the actual building during the first exer-cise not really focusing on the actual assignment but rather on building something they wanted. This means that a few of the participants did exercise three instead of number one. This might have many causes but a probable cause is a lack in the information provided by us. A possible way to become clearer is to only have one assignment that involves building and let the other two be drawing only exercises.
The free discussions that occurred in-between every part of the workshop supplied us with a lot of insight regarding opinions and attitudes. Female participants agreed on that mobile phone accessories of today are too much focused on young teenagers 54Summary of workshop in Appendix 1
55Norman, D.A. 2004, page 66
Picture 11. Participant’s
sketch describing herself as a tree
Picture 10. The supplied
building-materials
rather than women above 20 years of age. This lead us to con-sider putting extra focus on that market segment when later on designing.
Another big topic that was discussed during the workshop was the lack of quality feel in today’s mobile phones. Almost all the participants felt that manufacturers does not experiment enough with materials. The group had suggestions on using leather, wood and other organic materials. Overall the partici-pants experienced their phones as dull or to technical some also felt that her mobile phone was too masculine regarding form factor.
One of the most noticeable opinions we could get from this workshop was a lack of true feminine touch regarding personal technologies. This seems to be a field that needs further explo-ration and studies. Also the material matters need to be investi-gated in terms of what is on the market today and what is not. Overall we consider the workshop as a success since the par-ticipants contributed with many thoughts rather than ideas for concepts. The goal with the workshop was neither to test a con-cept nor to get suggestions for ideas. We used the conclusions from above as a starting point for our continued design process. 6.3 Trend studies and visits to fairs
A big part of the project has been our research, which we have based many of our conclusions on. We have visited CeBit in Hannover, Berlin and Milan in order to gain knowledge both about the mobile phone industry and other industries that may use experience design together with emotive factors.
6.3.1 CeBit
Sony Ericsson offered us to visit the CeBit fair in Hannover, Germany where they exhibited. This gave us a chance to see how personal technologies where communicated overall re-garding to experience design. We were actually somewhat sur-prised that the main focus still was on features, mega pixels and storage capacity. The mobile phone manufacturers though were better than the average regarding what was communicated. We could see an adoption of an ongoing trend involving flower-inspired patterns and natural colors in many of the displays but still some manufacturers had more of a meat-market style where the phones were hanging in lines sorted by functionality. Some manufacturers differed from the rest by letting the prod-ucts take a step back in order to give more room for
communi-Picture 13. Flowery patterns
at CeBit
Picture 12. Discussions
be-tween the parts of the work-shop
cation emotions and experiences. As an example LG can be mentioned for having a dance-show where their phones were built into the choreography. This is a good way of starting communicating more emotions and less numbers.
Sony Ericsson showed their phones in a youthful way. Music was a big theme all over CeBit and Sony Ericsson offered a DJ and possibilities to tryout mp3-player phones. (Picture 15) CeBit offered a great insight in forthcoming mobile technology. Some manufacturers actually tried to target the feminine side. Nokia with their L’amour collection of phones where one model actually got a leathery feel and all of them had connections to nature in their coloring, was working in the right direction but failing a bit when not being able to display the phones in a good way. The phones had some appealing elements also when comparing to the outcomes from our workshop both regarding materials and colors as well as when looking at how it is tar-geting female users. Another manufacturer, Alcatel, introduced a series of fashion phones (Picture 16). One of them was actu-ally described as an example of ‘true feminine design’, but the glittering gold shell off the phone did not correspond well with what was exemplified as feminine at our workshop.
When looking at materials of phones, traditional materials dominated, brushed steel or aluminum in some cases but mostly plastic of various kinds. Still the manufacturers in some matters experimented with the different plastic materials to get new tactile properties, but nothing more.
6.3.2 Berlin and Milan
As way to get an international perspective we went on a one-week trip to Berlin and Milan. Our aim was to find ongoing trends and identify differences between Germany, Italy and Sweden. We did not only focus on mobile phones but also on the fashion industry. Since our main interest was concerning experience design and how this is communicated we spoke to shop-assistants about on which attributes people choose their mobile phone. We found out that the salesmen in Germany only communicated features. The brand and what it meant was not a big concern, instead hard numbers and performance was of highest importance. This was partly confirmed by customers visiting the Sony centre in Berlin. In Italy there was a big differ-ence regarding all this, but also similarities. One of the biggest differences was that people in Milan seemed to be aware of the phone as an accessory, one could se mobile phones hanging around peoples necks, compared to Berlin were we hardly did see anyone interacting with a cellular phone. The stores,
Picture 16. Alcatel´s fashion
series, shiny but not neces-sarily feminine.
Picture 15. Sony Ericsson’s
display at CeBit
Picture 14. Dancing at LG’s
though, had very much in common. Phones were hanging in lines sorted either by functionality or by brand. Both in Berlin and in Milan we found that stores selling clothes focused a lot less on the products and more on the experience of the brand itself. Nike Town in Berlin was a great example where big screen were quoting famous athletes and showing glorious soc-cer goals and basketball moves. In Milan, Prada displayed one of their male suits together with a set of suitcases with a giant Titanic-like ship on a screen, behind giving a sense of classic travel-nostalgia (picture 17). This was something that was en-tirely missing in the mobile phone stores. (picture 18)
Another difference between Milan and Berlin was how people showed group coherence. In Milan this was quite visible (pic-ture 19). Young adults wore roughly the same clothes and ac-cessories as their friends whereas in Berlin, mostly former east, this was not as obvious. This can be interpreted as a result of lower impact regarding fashion and media.
Overall we could find connections between the thoughts of the workshop participants and what the fashion industry was cre-ating. Genuine materials such as leather dominated the big de-signer stores, however highly saturated colors and bling-bling was still a big thing in some designers’ collections. It seems that the struggle between playfulness and classic elegance will con-tinue. As a final input we could see the flowery patterns grow-ing by the minute. Almost every display had borrowed inspira-tion from nature and among clothes and accessories twirling patterns started to show.
6.3.3 How these inputs affected the process
From the research and gathering of information we decided that an add-on with a simple function or deeper meaning was the best way to create an added value without interfering with the already made product. The add-on should express and com-municate emotions and be a soft complement to a product with complicated technical specifications.
An idea that the added value should be a part of a larger uni-fied concept containing a series of add-ons with less focus on technology and more focus on emotional values helped us de-fining our thoughts and inputs from our early research.
In all of the described procedures through the design process we learned a lot that has had an impact on the overall design choices. From the inputs we got our concept slowly started to take its shape.
In Hannover we saw how different brands in the mobile indus-try have started to link their products to the fashion statements
Picture 19. In Milan group
coherence among youth was shown by clothing.
Picture 18. Mobile phone
store next to Prada
Picture 17. Narratives at
and trends of today. This led us to the conclusion that a cell-phone today is as much a fashion accessory as a purely func-tional product. The idea of creating a concept with a softer touch and less technical focus came to us. The Concept had to talk to the user on an emotional level and have a large influence on the way the user looks at a cell-phone.
Our research in Europe made us think about how the mobile industry communicates with the user and where focus lies when looking at the products. In stores we wanted to create a stronger statement and complement the features and functions with an overall unity and entirety that enhance the products. By creating a concept that speaks in emotional terms the user can identify them selves and make their own interpretation and meaning of the product.
The concept had to be created with a user-centered approach. By looking at trends and host a workshop we got an under-standing of the users needs and requirements. At the same time we could link the personal technology with fashion and thereby create a contemporary experience.
By now we had an opinion of what it was the experience should contain. The different parts of the process could be linked to-gether and had in one way or another something to do with each other. It was now that we could see the contours of a con-cept and start to narrow it down to its core. We named the overall concept Selectíf, which is french for selective.
6.4 Concept and prototypes
The Selectíf concept rendered from our work is built upon awareness of emotional values.
“Brands need to discover “the lost art of storytelling”. It's wrong to think that technology is cold and that it can't touch people. As con-sumers can now interact with brands, we have more of an opportunity to reach them, to trigger their emotions.” 56
We agree that Roberts in this interview had a point when he says that technology isn’t cold and that brands need to reach their consumers through their emotions. The meaning of an ex-perience is often that people can make connections to their own lives, principles and values and the experiences are most flour-ishing and have most influence on us when they have the most meaning to us.
56Tungate, M. (2006) Interview with Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi http://www.wgsn.com(2006-05-01)
