Call it an art installation if you want...
Call it an art installation if you want—I call it Experience Design.
I didn’t create it, Chris Cobb Did. He convinced Adobe Books (no, not the Adobe you’re thinking, this is a used bookstore) in San Francisco to let him and a team of friends rearrange all the books by color. And then he named it “There Is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World.”
The pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heather/sets/39617/ give you some idea what it must have been like. At first glance it looks like a photography trick or filter. But then you realize, no, it really looked like that.
And it must have been delightful. It must have been magical. It makes me want to roll around on the floor in there. And, yes, it even makes me want to buy books.
I’m not a trained designer. My Photoshop skills are pretty pathetic. My coworkers still correct me every time I call a typeface a font. I studied English Literature for far longer than was practical, and then somehow became a project manager at a web development company. After realizing what project managing was really like, I convinced the higher ups to let me try out the new-fangled role of Information Architecture. And then I got to learn on my feet when I found myself leading up the IA team on a low-profile little project called Orbitz.
Information Architecture tends to emphasize ease-of-use as a design goal above all others. Things should be easy to find, easy to use, easy to buy, easy, easy, easy. A good Information Architect would never recommend rearranging all the books by color. Because they wouldn’t be easy to find!
But a good Experience Designer would. Which is why I’m trying to be a good Experience Designer these days. Because I don’t want to just make things easy. I want to make people feel joy, or laugh, or even roll around on the floor. I don’t have all the answers yet, and I probably never will, but I’m having a lot of fun learning.
I didn’t create it, Chris Cobb Did. He convinced Adobe Books (no, not the Adobe you’re thinking, this is a used bookstore) in San Francisco to let him and a team of friends rearrange all the books by color. And then he named it “There Is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World.”
The pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heather/sets/39617/ give you some idea what it must have been like. At first glance it looks like a photography trick or filter. But then you realize, no, it really looked like that.
And it must have been delightful. It must have been magical. It makes me want to roll around on the floor in there. And, yes, it even makes me want to buy books.
I’m not a trained designer. My Photoshop skills are pretty pathetic. My coworkers still correct me every time I call a typeface a font. I studied English Literature for far longer than was practical, and then somehow became a project manager at a web development company. After realizing what project managing was really like, I convinced the higher ups to let me try out the new-fangled role of Information Architecture. And then I got to learn on my feet when I found myself leading up the IA team on a low-profile little project called Orbitz.
Information Architecture tends to emphasize ease-of-use as a design goal above all others. Things should be easy to find, easy to use, easy to buy, easy, easy, easy. A good Information Architect would never recommend rearranging all the books by color. Because they wouldn’t be easy to find!
But a good Experience Designer would. Which is why I’m trying to be a good Experience Designer these days. Because I don’t want to just make things easy. I want to make people feel joy, or laugh, or even roll around on the floor. I don’t have all the answers yet, and I probably never will, but I’m having a lot of fun learning.
posted by Biz at
8:13 AM
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