Daniel R. Stewart, Graphic Designer

From what I know about the professions that mix with Graphic Design, the User Experience encompasses the following:

1. Information Design

This refers to the structuring of information (bet you saw that one coming), which includes the laying out of rules for nomenclature which is fancy pants speak for how you phrase something/what vocabulary is used.

2. Interaction Design

This interrelates with information & graphic design, but with a focus on how the product is used. How errors are handled, how feedback is given to the user.

3. “Appearance”

I put this in quotes as it refers to more than just the visual appeal of a product (there you are Graphic Designer!) The sound factor is important as well. The sounds (or lack thereof) can make the difference. Finally there is the tactile aspect, which refers to how the object “feels”. It can be an aspect of giving feedback to the user (like a mouse click) or something as simple as using a different texture or thickness that makes it feel better in one’s hand.

…and yet it feels like there’s something missing. These three core values are close, but seem to ignore one extra bit that I propose to add:

4. Prejudice

Positive or negative, we all have prejudices based on past experiences, our culture, our personal bias towards anything. This touches on a lot of things that are covered by graphic design (appealing to someone’s visual aesthetic), information design (ensuring appropriate nomenclature & an appropriate organization of information contained), and interaction design (giving feedback to the user, how to handle an error.)

Examples for the case of adding #4:

• FedEx advertisement in america showing a smiling woman. Then showing the same advertisement in Saudi Arabia
• Political aspects of the country of origin e.g. “Made in Japan” used to carry more weight in the states than it does now
• Identical Product. One branded with Microsoft, the other Apple Computer

What do you think? Is this a welcome addition to the definition of user experience, or is it already covered in the other three? Do you have another possible aspect of the user experience that wasn’t covered here? Make yourself heard by leaving a comment.

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We see trends for information whether we conciously acknowledge them or not. Street signs are fairly generic. There is always a system that repeats, not just for brand consistency but for knowing exactly what you’re getting into. Red means stop, error, failure, etc.

Computer interfaces follow a system of similar predictability. It’s ironic when the inventor of the graphic user interface was Xerox. Seems fitting for redundancy. All windows follow a pattern of operation buttons here, resize there. Scroll here, display there, etc. These are all following the same pattern on the top 3 operating systems in the world.

Despite many years of improvement on operating systems, there still hasn’t been much change. The reasons are twofold:

They are already very familiar. Why change something that we know how to use already? Sure, it’s not revolutionary, or even more than a minor change, but that’s the point. The biggest real change was the integration of the taskbar in Windows, otherwise known as the dock on the Macintosh operating system 10.x

Filed under: graphic design, interaction design, user experience
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