about
Welcome to experience aesthetics, a new language for design.
Experience aesthetics ground us to the facets of the human experience. They make life beautiful and sublime. Designing any experience, whether it be a medical device, interior architecture of a school, or the newest attraction at Disney World, requires the designer to define the essence of how humans will connect with the experience beyond material, process, or data.
How to use experience aesthetics
There’s no answer manual on this. (Heck, we’re still figuring this out!) But what we’ve found thus far is that many experiences can be distilled down into 3 experience aesthetics. For example, what is the essence of hosting a birthday party? Surprise + Celebration + Fellowship. What about the experience of seeing your regular family doctor? Healing + Wellness + Respect.
background (Written by Auldyn)
“UI [user interface] is the saddle, the stirrups, and the reigns. UX [user experience] is the feeling you get being able to ride the horse, and rope your cattle.” - Dain Miller
I’ve used this quote for years to illustrate the difference between UX and UI. But, there aren’t many words for UX designers to describe experiences. So I started a list of words, that I called experience aesthetics, and collaborated with my dad (David), an interior architecture professor, and my husband (Keegan), an artist to create the first set of experience aesthetics.
Phases of the project
Establish the first list of experience aesthetics. (Nearly complete)
Create a page for each aesthetic with examples, inspiration, and definitions. (Not started)
Inspiration
“Instead of opening a new frontier, the everyday aesthetics discourse emerging in Western aesthetics today should be considered as restoring aesthetics to its original task: investigating the nature of experiences gained through sensory perception and sensibility.” Aesthetics of the Familiar, Yuriko Saito
MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek