EXPRESSO Tasting January 14, 2025
7am MST
Facilitators: Mat Duerden and Bob Rossman
A review of The XD Stack: An Investigation into the Practice of Experience Design (XD) 2024
By, Yolanda G. Stapleton. A Thesis completed for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree, in the School of Design and the Built Environment, at Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley Western Australia, 6102. Postal address: GPO Box U1987, Perth Western Australia, 6845
Web Access to the Thesis is at: https://espace.curtin.edu.au/handle/20.500.11937/95585
Background: Dr. Stapleton has 20 years of experience in the design field. Her thesis was completed in the School of Design and the Built Environment. Individuals with this disciplinary background are not usual contributors to Expresso. They consider themselves experience designers.
Dr Stapleton had two major sources of data. One was her review of 17 books written about experience and experience design from 1992—2019. Second was a series of interviews with personnel in design studios to investigate the actual practice of experience design. Her conclusion was that experience design is in disarray. After nearly 30 years of development there is no consensus on major points including the definition of experience, experience design, and specific processes for executing experience design. Not finding answers to these issues, she concluded that Experience Design is a Boundary Object, i.e., it consists of information used in different ways by different communities for collaborative work. Boundary Objects are plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with enough immutable content to maintain integrity. (This description is from Wikipedia.) Second, from this conclusion and using the information deduced from her two major data sources, she developed an XD Stack. It is basically a template of the elements needed for a coherent experience design process from end to end.
The Thesis is over 400 pages but a lot of it is normal stuff needed to be included in a thesis. Feel free to read the whole piece. We have identified readings for the two sessions we will facilitate. These readings abstract the material but are suitable for participating in the discussions proposed. Readings for Session 1 are longer than we usually read but the readings for Session 2 are shorter.
We will focus on the following two points during Expresso Tastings.
- One is her investigation into the concept of Experience Design which she finds in disarray after nearly thirty years of development. Disarray due to a lack of agreement on basic concepts like experience, experience design, and a process for completing experience design. Our first session will consist of readings from her dissertation about this disarray in experience design.
- The second session will be devoted to discussing her second assumption, experience design is derived from the design discipline. Readings will reveal her assumptions and assertions about this point of view.
Session 1. The Disarray in Experience Design as a discipline. December 10, 2024
Readings for Session 1
Abstract vi—vii
Chapter 1, Introduction 1-32
Chapter 2, Save for Session 2
Chapter 3, 49-63
Chapter 4, 64-85
Chapter 5, 88—129 This seems like a long chapter, but it is mostly abstract reviews of the 17 volumes she reviewed that serve as a major source of her data. Each volume is presented in an abstracted template, so it can be read quickly. It is a very informative historical review of the 17 volumes on experience design written from 1992—2019.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
Is experience design in disarray? What is out of order?
What questions and investigations should EXPRESSO be advocating to resolve this disarray?
Is Experience Design a Boundary Object? What are the implications of this?
