Intersection of the physical and digital worlds
Austin Brown, UX designer at EffectiveUI, and his colleague Lindsay Moore wondered if there was a way to design better, by combinubg the best aspects of interaction design and product design, as well as a little service design. They hoped that this would allow to create a holistic experience that transcends definition, and thus create better user experiences.
To test this idea, they set out to create design concepts for two common household products: an eco-friendly dishwasher and the home thermostat.
The article chronicles their process of combining disciplines and making decisions, and the lessons learned along the way.
“With the ability to incorporate modern techniques and practices to add value, we examined how we could make a dishwasher and a home thermostat more useful, usable, and desirable. These products tend to work just fine for most users, but fall short when it comes to providing a genuinely pleasant, compelling user experience. While some of the things we learned in this experiment could easily be applied to any product or digital interface, these were simulations only and did not result in any new products.”
