A little late on reporting from the workshop last week: Jack Schulze&Matt Webb showed us some real good methods to define design concepts, and to “breath life” into them by communicating the experiences the user might have and that will define the product for them (Matt used the example of unboxing a product.Some brands, like Apple, have managed to make that into an experience worthy of telling your friends about…).

experience-hooks-presentation

I found it really hard, but very helpful, to twist my head into imagining my project as a finished, established product, and the method certainly showed me how abstract my ideas still are…

The feedback I got was sure enough that I had to define my project. For the workshop, I had pursued an idea of making the concept a orienteering-based game about collecting pictures in the city, but I had not actually looked at the gaming itself, and that was realy those moments I should have presented in an engaging way. And it was also pointed out that I should be better at capitalising on the images taken. So I want to be more visual from now on.

Schulze&Webb´s approach to engaging design seems to be allot about branding the products in a way. Not as in logotypes and marked strategies, but about establishing believable product-worlds that shows what the product is all about. And sure enough it seems like product design and branding are melting more and more into each other, with service and product overlapping (think about the way the iPhone ad´s are instruction manuals or is it vice verca?). Enough ranting, needles to say the workshop was a great new insight to making engaging products. Now it reamins to do it…