Experience Ecosystems
An experience ecosystem is a dynamic, deeply interconnected network of people, objects, environments, messaging and services that work together to accomplish a purpose.
Every experience ecosystem can be decomposed or developed through a deceptively simple framework:
1) What is it?
- at this level, individual agents within the system are identified. Quite simply, what is the system composed of?
2) What does it afford?
- Every agent within the system is there because it does *something*. What does each component do?
3) What’s the impact?
- Every agents action has an impact. How does it affect the system or those in it?
4) What’s the purpose?
- Every individual agent and system is actively working towards or motivated by some larger purpose.
Modeling Ecosystems is a large task that takes time, patience, tinkering, and most importantly diverse perspectives. The “Greening the Electricity System” project attached is an example of large scale, deeply interconnected infrastructures that were defined and reinterpreted using the anatomy of infrastructure framework, which seeks to help designers understand a given infrastructure and their affects, but also codifies each agent in the system and what might motivate them. While designers might use this as a tool to both describe and prescribe how to begin to conceptualize an ecosystem or offer a paradigm change, it’s clear that the most important role a designer can play is that of provocateur — not seeking to definitively answer, but to provide scenarios and a portfolio of options and possibilities that incite and instigate conversation around the types of worlds we are building and if they are in fact the way we want to go.
As User Experience Designers it is our responsibility to value the inherent interconnected-ness between agents within an infrastructure and anticipate as much as possible the potential consequences. Just as we strive to create conditions for end users, what’s becoming even more essential in the era of ecosystems is designing conditions in which decisions are made. How are you empowering teams to make the right choice?
