Skip to main content

Experience Architecture

Experience Architecture is the “art of articulating a clear user story or journey through an information architecture, interaction design, and experience design such that an end user navigates across products and services offered by the client or as intended by the designer.”

First of all, what I like about this concept: Whether it be with architecture, branding, or any artistic medium, I appreciate that storytelling is the key. Storytelling is an art in and of itself, one which is often the universal and relatable aspect behind everything else.

As a professional writer who leans into the literary and creative side of writing often, I have a deep appreciation for this crossover. And while, for the most part, I personally do not fit what it means to be an experience architecture or attendee experience (AX) professional, I have in a sense already worked on growing my experience in this realm. For example, as professional writer, I have a general understanding of design. So I think my general knowledge can help propel me further in the field of experience architecture.

I found that the readings, such as "How To Get From Space to Place," helped highlight and demonstrate one piece of the puzzle when it comes to design thinking and accessibility. It especially helps highlight the importance of it all, especially in Brady’s “User Centered Approach” piece. This conscientious way of thinking is integral to the mindset of a professional writer. It has been present throughout all of my previous classes and I feel familiarized with the general concepts of Architectural Design by proxy.

Keeping all of this in mind—accessibility, usability, experience and overall story—and applying it to spaces is ultimately what it means to be an experience architect. I imagine my classmates and I are likely closer to that than we think we are.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is Experience Architecture The Future of Professional Writing?

As a team of Professional Writing students, our mission is to discover how the Professional Writing major is evolving and share how and why experience architecture is making its way to the forefront of the field . It is our hope that readers of this blog — whether they might be current students, past students, prospective students, or professors — learn the ins-and-outs of the major and begin to see how the worlds of writing and design intertwine.  Professional Writing is currently a fairly popular major among universities, but one of the most interesting things about the field is that it’s always evolving. So what is the Professional Writing major anyway? When it comes to a major like this one, there isn’t a set plan of study among universities. In fact, the course requirements and the definition itself differ from school to school. Because of its natural diversity and constant evolution, Professional Writing doesn’t exactly have a clear future. If design and usability are becomin...

Think “Experience Architecture”

At the beginning of this class, we were assigned readings and videos about airports in order to conceptualize the main theme of the course, experience architecture. Experience architecture is the design of spaces (architecture) for users (experience), such as an airport. In de Botton's work, "A Week at the Airport," de Botton addresses a doubt about experience architecture that sheds light on the scope in which the concept applies. "Standing before costly objects of technological beauty, we may be tempted to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we could grow stupid through admiration...[and] yet to refuse to be awed at all might in the end be merely another kind of foolishness. In a world full of a chaos and irregularity, the terminal seemed a worthy and intriguing refuge of elegance and logic." (de Botton, 2009, p. 3-4). Simply put, experience architecture is design that is meant for the experience of the user. De Botton communicates this through an exp...

Proposed Plan for Socially Distanced User Study of Wix.com

Plan for User Study: www.Wix.com I. Introduction Although a usability test is unlikely in this socially-distanced and pandemic-filled world, if I were to do one, this post describes how I would see myself doing it as well as a basic overview of my plan of study, had this been an option. II. Identifying Users 1. The users of this site align most with the age group of 20-35. This demographic uses Wix primarily for educational purpose and small business website platforms. 2. Users in this case will work through website creation, as that is the main function of the site. III. Target Identification of Problems Below are the main heuristics and an associated question to further explore the content of the site as I plan a User Study. A. Engagement Are the screen and workplace too crowded, and are they layered to maximize engagement? Is the site   nested too deeply with helpful tools to be useful? B. Error Tolerance Does the Help Desk analysis show enough specific problem de...