The Meaning of Experience From a Design Perspective: An Interpretative Review

Abstract

Experience is being approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, involving knowledge and research from across different areas of expertise. In spite of extensive research in the field of experience, it has yet not clearly emerged and developed as a research for design application, thus interpreting and describing experience in terms of design perspective is a complex subject. Specifically, with regards to understanding the relevance of design and experience, the need for clear interpretation of experience from a design perspective is seen as critical. This paper contributes to a rudimentary understanding of design and experience based on a thorough review of literature. The objective of this paper is to make close comparisons between design and experience and determine the degree of relatedness among one another to examine and identify the meaning of experience in rational terms, specifically from a design perspective. Therefore, the paper aims to provide an overview into the meaning, provenance and detailed analysis of design and experience, and also carefully reviews across a number of key attributes of both terms. As a consequence, the paper will propose a set of four distinct determinants of experience as an important feature to consider from a design background, which are Narrative, Temporal, Emotion and Meaning. In this interpretative review, the different research and analysis emerging in literature on design and experience has been reviewed and discussed, the results and recommendations drawn from this study may be utilized as a vehicle for the development of best practice guidelines for further research in the experience design area.