Due presentazioni di Experientia a Busan, Corea del sud

20 novembre 2010 – La settimana scorsa Experientia è stata in Corea del Sud, ospite del Design Center di Busan, presso il quale si sono svolte due conferenze internazionali in occasione della prima settimana dedicata al design (“Design Week"), di cui il Centro è parte integrante.

Il primo incontro – il Busan International Design Congress – si è
fortemente ispirato a ciò che concerne la ??User experience??,
approfondendo il tema dell?Energia Digitale.

Il secondo si è invece occupato in maniera più specifica del design nautico (si trova infatti a Busan il quinto porto più
grande del mondo ed è inoltre in corso d?opera la rivalutazione delle
zone marittime circostanti).

Moderatore di entrambi gli eventi è stato Ken Nah, professore di Design
Management alla International Design School for
Advanced Studies (IDAS) di Hongik University, nonché Direttore Generale del Seoul World
Design Capital 2010.

Mark Vanderbeeken, senior partner di Experientia ed ideatore del blog Putting People First, ha partecipato ad entrambi le conferenze,
tenendo il discorso di apertura nella prima, ed in veste di oratore
principale nella seconda.

Durante la lettura delle slide vi suggeriamo di selezionare la colonna
con le note dell?oratore ("Speaker Notes") vicino ai commenti ("Comments") per poter leggere il testo
che le accompagnava durante l?esposizione.

Digital design for behavioral change ? Engaging people in reducing energy consumption

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing
the human race in our era. We cannot continue in our reliance on
depleting and non-renewable fossil fuels to power our world. We all know
we need to change our behaviours ? yet very little seems to happen.
Why? Research shows that people are confused about what actions will
really have the most impact on reducing energy, and do not have all the
necessary information, right tools, and appropriate feedback on the
impact of their actions. To be effective, campaigns and technologies to
encourage behavioural change must make an impact on our physical
environment, and our personal, social and cultural beliefs and norms.
But do they? Smart meters, one of the tools hailed as the digital answer
to energy reduction, have come under a barrage of criticism for being
badly designed, counter-intuitive, and failing to offer enough
encouragement, feedback and motivation for real change.

Experientia is currently part of an international team, building a
low-to-no carbon emissions block in Helsinki. We are working with the
people of Helsinki to design people-centred smart metres, to envisage
sustainable services, and to build a realistic, effective framework for
behavioural change. Sustainability requires a different lifestyle, but
we believe that it is not a lifestyle that requires sacrifices for
people ? instead it can actually increase human satisfaction, sense of
community and neighbourly collaboration and trust. We believe that
changing behaviours to achieve a more sustainable future, also implies
changing our world to a more enjoyable quality of life.

User experience in yachting design

The yachting market is, on the whole, still product
oriented, rather than customer oriented. The focus of the way the
industry presents itself centres on the product, rather than on the
experience. As the yachting industry has seen its double-digit growth of
the past decades diminish in the wake of the economic crisis, it now
needs to look inwards, to renew and refresh its own design approach and
methodology, and outward, to explore new markets, and to concentrate on
how to enter them successfully. This requires a people-centred approach,
which considers yachts not as mere physical products, but as
facilitators of an experience.

User-experience design is built upon an understanding of and dialogue
with the potential consumer, in order to create a more ?user-centred?
product and thereby drastically enhance the ?total? experience of the
brand. Yachts are luxury products; their major selling point goes beyond
their form or function, but also covers the use of the boat, its rarity
and what it expresses about the owner. This fits well with the idea of
an experience-driven product: experience is invisible, permeating and
memorable. It does not contrast with the production volume. Its very
uniqueness and individuality means that it can be offered to many,
without reducing the perception of rarity.

Many of the yachting industry?s customers now come from emerging
markets, and from a younger demographic base. These new customers often
bring with them totally new paradigms, needs and desires. Creating
yachts for these markets requires not just product design, graphic
design, computer science and engineering skills, but also ethnography,
cognitive psychology and sociology, as well as an understanding of
interaction design, interface design and service design. Tools and
techniques that offer insights into these consumers and how they differ
from traditional yacht markets will be vital if the yacht industry is
going to go beyond the self-referential designs created for the Western
luxury market, and new design disciplines will allow the industry to
create experiences that endure across individual, social and cultural
contexts. To do so, it will have to address considerations such as the
democratization of luxury, the desire for bespoke goods, two-way
engagement with consumers, differentiation through service, responsible
and sustainable luxury and the integration of web and other developing
technologies.

Visitate anche il sito Core 77 in cui Mark ha pubblicato un’ampia riflessione sul design coreano.