Welcome to Week 9: Experience Design
Adapting the physical environment to serve the needs of mobile technologies represents a profound and ongoing transformation in the way we interact with our surroundings and harness the potential of mobile technologies. Marketers have even coined a term for this blending of physical and digital environments: "phygital".Â
As mobility has become integral to our daily lives, the ways we work, communicate, learn, navigate, and seek entertainment are all influenced by adaptations in the physical world, in other words, by experience design.
"Experience Design is not about optimizing the usability of a device or an application, it is about optimizing the usefulness of the real world around you." (Vogt, 2023)
These developments are blurring the lines between the physical and digital environments, offering new opportunities for engagement, connectivity, and learning in an increasingly mobile world. As technology continues to advance, it is likely that this trend will persist, further shaping our physical surroundings to accommodate the evolving affordances of mobile technologies.
Image: @asawin, Creative Commons CC0. (https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1575607)
In this Movable Feast we will look at some examples of where the physical environment is being adapted, discussing the benefits and challenges of each. We'll talk about how these developments can be used to create new learning experiences. And we'll take a longer-term view to see the directions these developments may take.