A poem does not describe what is there. It finds the image that holds what is there. The specific detail that makes the reader feel something the situation contains but does not announce.

This is also what experience design does.

Here is a situation — specific, inhabitable — that contains something that was always possible and was not previously available.

Not: here is a feature that will make this task easier.

The bus stop that lets you talk to birds. The car that knows when to ring a bell instead of a horn. The soft glow that arrives through a bedside lamp from someone who is thinking of you.

These are not metaphors. They are the thing itself. Specific enough to be felt. Open enough for the person inside them to bring their own meaning.

This is what a poem does. This is what we are trying to do.

The question a poet asks of a situation — what else is in this? what does this actually hold? what is the image that makes it available? — is the same question we ask of every connected system we work with.

What else could this do?

In the direction of the people it is with.

Experience designers are poets of connected world, revealing possibilities of conversations we can have with the world around, inviting moments that put this world back together in new ways.

We started kinetic optimism studio because we think that experience design process doesn’t end when the tasks are efficiently optimized: We see life as more than “being in permanent task mode”. At k_o studio we believe design is about creating new possibilities and inspiring new expectations. We think these aspects need to be part of design process, so products and systems we are designing for, can benefit from being meaningfully present in peoples lives.

Designing experiences is about intentionally and imaginatively inviting objects and systems to the conversations that people are having with the world. We use social imagination as a design process to move into focus human goals, values, intentions and context.

As designers of experiences we are expanding the vision of what human experience in connected world will feel like. We see connected world as a place full of potential for surprise, imagination, and possibility for new relations.

For our studio, experience design just like poetic structure offers means for inviting moments of purpose and magic, a holistic integration /aka putting this world back together/, path to emotional insight and new meaning patterns emerging directly from everyday context of product or system presence in our lives.

Designing experience isn’t just about adding more technology to the conversation, but about considering what kind of conversations we want the product or system to invite.

We design experience as adaptive conversation using the resources of the given situation. This includes values, ethics and human intentions as a resource for design inquiry and intervention. Experience has meaning when we can realize how it is related to things that we value.

We need to continue learning how to have better relations with the world around.

We see the technology as active participant, making room for more possibilities to invite moments of purpose and magic to our experience with products and systems present in our lives.

These are notes from an ongoing inquiry into how people and technology relate to each other — and into what design can do when that relationship is still being formed.

Poets of connected world