Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love

Citation

du Preez, M. (2010), "Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 181-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831011026823

Being visible on the web has become an important marketing and business tool. Various books published in the past few years have focused on designing good web sites able to market products or services and share information or experiences. The focus in most of these books is on the technical design of interesting web sites, and they address issues such as the hierarchical or linear structure of the web site, the layout thereof, and the information that should be included. One of the latest publications on this topic, Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love, is not just another book on web site design – it aims at introducing digital experience design for web sites.

In his foreword David Lee King emphasises that experience is everything, whether this is a physical or digital experience. King describes these experiences as the story of people and the relationships they have with each other, as well as their relationships with the businesses and brands of the world they choose to interact with throughout their lives. With this description in mind, King guides readers into the secrets of designing web sites that harness the power of “experience design” to help users find information quickly while creating positive digital experiences they might both want to remember and share with others.

King believes visitors to organisations' digital spaces do not want to think about interacting with the organisations' web sites. They want to make their purchase or find the information they need with ease. He believes it would help if the visitors could be engaged and enchanted in the process. But how are these goals achieved? Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love connects the dots by explaining how web site structure, community and customers are all parts of the total digital experience. This book presents solid ideas and strategies that can help organisations gain the advantage of providing the visitors to their web sites with enjoyable memorable experiences.

The book consists of 13 chapters and is divided into three parts. Chapter 1 defines what King means by digital experience design. The chapter also discusses three aspects of designing digital experiences. These are the structural, community, and customer focus design aspects. Each part of the book addresses one of these three digital design aspects. Throughout his discussion King introduces a range of tools and strategies, and shares some best practices. He shows how organisations can use experience design to distinguish themselves from competition and uncork the virtual marketing genie. The final chapter, Chapter 13, synthesises the preceding chapters into examples of how a web site might look if it included all three types of focus.

Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love is an essential work for all interested in designing web sites that visitors would find memorable, revisit and share with others. The book includes a useful list of resources and recommended reading, a glossary and an index. Furthermore, reading the book is an experience itself – one web site designers most probably will want to reread and share with colleagues and friends.