1. Designing for User Experience - Understanding and Crafting Meaningful Interactions

Designing for User Experience: Understanding and Crafting Meaningful Interactions

Welcome to another session of PM3. I'm Natalia, and I'd like to start by sharing a little about my background. I've worked at Dell, Booking.com, and startups like Softa, Engage (where we helped create Catarse.me), and I also spent time at ThoughtWorks working on socio-economic projects related to health, education, and safety. Currently, I'm at Booking.com, working with both marketing and product teams.

In today’s session, we’ll explore three main topics: first, understanding what experience means in the context of product design; second, the elements needed to design a great user experience; and third, some methodologies to guide us through the process of designing for user experience.

What is User Experience (UX)?

To begin, let's ask the basic question: what is experience? If I were to show you four images from Booking.com — an advertisement, the company logo, the Booking.com website on an iPad, and a hotel room, which do you think represents user experience? The correct answer is that all of these are part of the user experience.

User experience is everything a person encounters with your product. It starts before a user even interacts with your product directly and extends well after they’ve finished using it. For example, someone might see a Booking.com ad, visit the website, and make a reservation. Then, the experience continues when they arrive at their hotel, all the way through the reflection on their journey after they return home.

UX encompasses not just the digital interface, but the entirety of the user's journey, including the emotional and situational factors that influence how they interact with the product.

The Journey: From Planning to Reflection

A user’s experience typically goes through several stages:

1. Needs and Motivation: The journey begins with a need or motivation. For example, someone might need a vacation or need to travel for business. The need could be broad (“I need to take a break”) or more specific (“I want a relaxing trip with a companion”).

2. Planning: Once the need is recognized, the user starts planning. This might include questions like “Where should I go? How long will I stay? What can I afford?” Whether consciously or unconsciously, the user is preparing to meet their need by developing a plan.

3. Execution: This is the phase where the plan is put into action. The user might book a hotel, organize transport, and make the trip.

4. Reflection: After the trip, the user reflects on their experience. They might share stories, review accommodations, calculate expenses, or simply reminisce about their journey.

These stages highlight that user experience is not just about what happens when a person uses the product — it spans the entire journey from needs and motivations to planning, execution, and post-experience reflection.

What Do Users Really Remember?

When thinking about your last trip, do you recall the digital products you used, or do you remember the actual experience — the adventure, the new foods, or the places you visited? Ideally, users should remember the experience, not the product itself. If the product is well-designed, users shouldn't be focused on it. The product's role is to enable the experience, not to be the focus of attention.

Designing for Experience

A framework I like to use for thinking about the different stages of user experience includes:

• Needs: The motivations driving the user, such as needing a break or wanting to explore a new place.
• Planning: The unconscious or conscious process of deciding how to meet those needs, like deciding where to go or what to do.
• Execution: Acting on those plans — making bookings, traveling, and experiencing the journey.
• Reflection: Looking back at the experience, sharing memories, evaluating services, and processing the outcome.

Most digital products focus on the execution phase because it’s where actions are most visible and measurable. However, opportunities exist in every stage of the user journey, from anticipating needs to supporting reflection. For example, Booking.com offers products that help users with planning, execution (making reservations), and even reflecting (leaving reviews).

Hassenzahl’s Model of User Experience

Marc Hassenzahl’s framework provides another perspective on user experience. It focuses on three main areas:

• Product Characteristics: Content, presentation, functionality, and interaction. These are the features and elements we design as product teams.
• Intentions: The practical (pragmatic) and emotional (hedonic) goals we expect users to achieve when using the product.
• Consequences: The feelings of satisfaction, pleasure, or frustration that result from using the product.

However, when users interact with a product, they bring their own context, which affects how they experience it. We can plan the product’s features and intentions, but we can’t control how the user will interpret these elements in their unique context.

Context Matters

Consider the following example: after a user makes a reservation on Booking.com, we send them a confirmation email saying, “Your dream trip is confirmed! We hope you create amazing memories.” If the user is traveling for a funeral, this message will feel inappropriate, even offensive. This is where the user’s personal context plays a critical role in shaping their experience.

We Can’t Fully Control UX

The reality is that we can’t fully design a user’s experience because we can’t control their context. No matter how sleek or intuitive your product is, users will always choose what’s most convenient for them at that moment. However, while we can’t control everything, we can design for user experience by creating products that are flexible, intuitive, and tailored to a range of contexts.

Designing for User Experience

So, while this class was meant to be about designing the user experience, it’s really about designing for user experience. We must acknowledge that every user’s experience will be unique, but we can implement strategies and use design methodologies to make those experiences richer and more engaging.

Conclusion

User experience is about more than just interactions with a product. It spans a user’s entire journey, from recognizing a need to reflecting on the outcome of their journey. As product designers, we can influence parts of this journey by understanding users’ motivations, designing intuitive solutions, and anticipating the contexts in which they will use our products.

While we can’t control everything, we can design products that respect and adapt to the uniqueness of each user’s experience.