Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Experience Matters

Wemake much of our experiences, because our experiences make us.

I’mreminded of this every day at Mizzou School of Journalism as I watchstudent journalists live the “Missouri Method,” an immersivelearning approach to journalism education. Some make graceful leapsfrom classroom to newsroom and back again. Most trek back and forth,with a few spectacular stumbles along the way. The “back and forth”is what counts, though, and it’s why wanna-be journalists fromaround the world hope to attend Mizzou: for the practical experiencethat they can’t get anywhere else. (Really, that’s what theysay.)

Butwhy can’t they get it elsewhere? There are many great universitieswith outstanding journalism programs shepherded by distinguishedfaculty. Yet none of them provides the range of opportunities andexperiences available at Mizzou. With three professional, commercialnews outlets (newspaper, TV, radio) attached to the J-School,students are participants and contributors in working newsenvironments from the moment they enter the program. They learn, theyapply, they miss a deadline, they get help from advisors, they can’tfind a source, they work on teams, they have room to fail – tolearn from their mistakes so that they do better the next time. Theyexperience what it is to be journalists.

Designing for experience

Experiencesare more than living through events. Experiences are the emotions onefeels and the learnings one derives from the events of one’s life.One’s emotional state has great effect on whether and what onelearns and the meaning one gives the experience. By extension, theway one perceives an event and its context has everything to do withhow one meets and manages similar future events.

Designersof all stripes have recognized the importance of emotion, and ofevoking the right emotion to elicit the sought-for experience.Whether a car or a zoo or a conference or a website, the designoutput is part product, part ambience, part interaction, partbehavior. Each element produces an emotional response in theaudience/customer. The sum of these emotional responses together withthe interpretation and meaning an individual gives it is theessential experience of the user.

Thegreat challenge, of course, is to come up with a design thatgenerates pretty much the same experience for the majority of thosewho encounter it. In the world of digital media, frantic devotion todesigning engaging and “sticky” user experiences has spawned thepractice of user experience (UX) design (frequently misunderstood tobe 21^st -centuryjargon for user interface and/or screen design). Game designers takethis a step further in focusing on player experience. And, while wedon’t call it out specifically, elearning designers are greatlyconcerned with what we might call “learner experience.”Regardless of the discipline, all designers seek to create a commonemotional experience among the audiences that interact with andwithin their product or program.

Context and content count – but so do emotions

Witha respectful nod to Rummler and Brache (20 years ago, they got usthinking about the “white space” in organizational charts),experience design is fundamentally about the emotional white spacethat surrounds each audience member. Experience designers seek tomold moments and interactions that provoke the emotions that cause usto focus,to remember,to decide,to perform,and to learn.Learning designers, like game designers, put their audience intosettings and situations that require choices. When designed well, thecontent and sequence of choices the learner/player must makejuxtaposed on the context, ambience and environment surrounding thosechoices fill the emotional white space with anticipation,frustration, fiero (the feeling of pride we get from overcoming anobstacle or mastering a challenge), and, ultimately, accomplishment –all the emotions that lead to practicable learning and repeatableperformance.

Ibelieve it was Pete Seeger who quipped, “Educationis when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when youdon’t.” While there is a certain truth to his statement, myinner-learning designer prefers a more purpose-driven approach tolife – and design. My experience tells me that good learning designmust examine the emotional white space that lives around each learnerso that the learner’s experience leads to the learning s/he wantsand needs.