Despite the omnipresence of ‘experience’ in marketing ‘lingo’ and usability forums Experience Design in many ways lacks professional and academic frameworks, in which research in the area can be conducted, discussed, published and reviewed. It was the aim of this project to establish a R&D community of academics and professionals interested in the exploration of issues in Experience Design; to provide them with an online platform to develop their individual projects while engaging, interacting and communicating with likewise interested researchers and professionals; to additionally organise opportunities for offline interaction to strengthen the network and collaborations; and through these efforts to ultimately jointly clarify theoretical and methodological issues and advance our understanding of the potentials and limitations of the area.

For this purpose in October 2012 initial submissions were called for on significant, original, and previously unpublished research, case studies and potentially other – more experimental – research formats. Based on the outcomes of a double-blind peer-reviewing process authors of accepted abstracts were invited to join a closed online research group to subsequently collaboratively work on the further development of respective projects to full scale book-chapters to be published in the book as proposed in the following.

In result ‘Experience Design: Concepts & Case Studies’ brings together leading international scholars to provide a cross-section view of current academic discourse and professional practice within this emerging interdisciplinary field. Contributors use real-life case studies drawn from a range of national and disciplinary contexts to explore the meaning of ‘experience’; ways in which specific ‘experiences’ can be designed; which methodologies and practices are employed in this process, and how experience design interrelates with other academic and professional disciplines.

Publication:
Benz, Peter, ed. Experience Design: Concepts & Case Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.