I’ve long been a fan of Stephen P. Andersons work, especially his presentations. One diagram that really stuck with me is his User Experience pyramid. I’ve reproduced it here using Omnigraffle, but you can find the original in his Creating Pleasurable Interfaces presentation on slideshare (slide 15).
This diagram emphasises that products can be beautiful & usable but still lacking in meaning. Anderson also points out, toward the end, that applications like Craigslist have achieved meaning without ever being beautiful.
If you ever think your application is finished and your work is done, have a look through the pyramid. There’s always more to do.
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It’s good business as well, since people typically pay more for experiences.
I heard an engaging presentation by Nathan Shedroff (http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/MeaningfulExperiences.pdf) and his experience model expands on this pyramid, or “hierarchy of needs”, and adds five other dimensions that make up meaningful experiences. He also went into the 15 core meanings. (I never read the Making Meaning book.)
You are absolutely right that you can have meaning without beauty and it’s also fair to say you can be VERY successful without making it all the way to experience. However, creating meaningful experiences seems to be where the magic truly happens.
Posted by Justin Knecht at 11:15 pm on 25 September, 2008.