Learning Experience Design: Part One

This is part one in a series on learning how to become an experience designer. In this part, I will cover the essential business skills needed for a great experience designer. In part two, I cover the essential design skills needed for experience design.

After doing experience design for many years, I believe that it takes a combination of design and business skills. I am not the only one with this point of view. For example, check out this great interview with Harley Manning of Forrester Research. He describes how both skills are needed; however, he seems to believe that they usually aren’t found in the same person. Rather, success comes from the collaboration of a good designer and a good business person. Collaboration is key. To help facilitate that collaboration, it is helpful to share some of the same skills and language so that you are better able to communicate. As a designer, you may not need an MBA but you do need the ability to communicate with people who have one.

So what does it take to become an experience designer? I believe that a designer should be able to:

• • Identify the customer and their needs

• • Identify the touch points and devices needed to support the activity

• • Ability to define and design the touches

• • Be an expert on at least one type of interaction

• • Ability to communicate your design to others

• • Identify what makes the experience unique and better

• • Identify ways to improve it

• • Ability to work collaboratively

• • Understand business

• Understanding Business

Let’s start with understanding business. You might wonder why that is important for a designer – you are creative and you just want to make neat things. True, you do need to make innovative things. But, in order to actually get those things produced, there must be a business value in creating them – they solve a need for a person and that person is willing to pay for them.

Here is a list of some of the basic business skills a designer should have.

Accounting and finance. You should be able to read and understand a basic financial report.

Entrepreneurship. You should have the ability to create a business plan for a new product or business and use that plan to get others interested in the idea.

Marketing. This includes skills like generating awareness, branding, and product segmentation.

Innovation. This is the ability to identify new features, products or opportunities.

Management. You should be able to run all or part of a project.

Leadership, Communication, Influence and Salesmanship. The ability to set a vision and get others to follow. Effectively telling your story in a way that others understand and act.

These are the skills you might learn from an MBA program. You can get these skills on the job, from a school, or by doing a self study program. On my Continuous Learning page, I have outlined the books I have read to gain this knowledge. The list is pretty long and it might feel overwhelming. If I were to start today, I would select the following business books to get started.

Experiences are distinct from products, services, and commodities. The primary resource that explains what this means and how it impacts business is The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business is a Stage by Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore

Few people can describe the impact design can have on business better than Tom Peters. In his book Re-Imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, he provides great insights and inspiration into how to differentiate your business.

You often need to pitch your design and business ideas. In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki provides helpful information on how to craft a pitch that works.

You need to be able to identify the ways in which your proposal is different or unique. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne provides some excellent ideas on how to do this. Examples come from Cirque du Soleil and Yellow Tail among others.

You need basic business and management skills. There are several publishers that provide that type of information in an accessible way. I have used the McGraww-Hill series and been pretty happy with it. The series includes:

• • The McGraw-Hill 36 Hour Course in Finance by Robert A. Cooke

• • The McGraw-Hill 36 Hour Marketing Course by Jefrey L. Seglin
    

• • The McGraw-Hill 36 Hour Accounting Course by Robert Dixon
    

• The McGraw-Hill 36 Hour Project Management Course by Helen Cooke

Being able to speak and persuade others is key in any kind of organization. There are probably many good books on the topic. One that is a good start is The Little Green book of Getting Your Way: How to Speak, Write, Persuade, Influence, and Sell Your Point of View to Others by Jeffrey Gitomer

To make a project great means thinking about it differently. It isn’t just a matter of completing deliverables on time. It is about tapping into the skills and energy of the team. A great resource to think about doing projects differently is Project 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Every “Task” Into a Project That Matters! by Tom Peters.

I hope this list is helpful. In Part Two of this series, I will cover the design skills part of becoming an experience designer. Have you taken on a similar challenge? What worked for you? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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