The more we start to dissect and understand our practice of design, we start to learn that it is all about the experience–this is an aspect that industrial designers understand all too well. Graphic designers (or any designer for that matter) should take heed of the lessons of experience. In order to build upon and make any experience memorable, it has to engage at least 2 senses. If design is just a visual experience, it hardly becomes memorable.
Oddly enough, there has been a surge in the so-called field called UX (user experience) design. This comes as no surprise. If you’ve ever studied industrial design, you know that this is built into the discipline.
What comes to mind about the human experience is that it is built on our senses–the mechanisms of how we interact with our world. Design is all about how we can extend those senses and in essence be an extension of humanity.
Experiences have to be designed to be memorable. And, in order for a design to be memorable, it has to engage at least 2 senses. That’s what makes a design so cool. Since experiences are the product of what our brain makes it out to be, we have to trigger it in the brain. This is what makes designers different and more valued than computer users.
Next time you look at “good” design, start to understand why it works with you and if it’s engaging more than just your visual sense.
My design world 