Rotman Magazine Winter 2005 • 47
Point of View: Bill Buxton
Experience Design vs.
Interface Design
What is it that designers design? Most peo-
ple would answer by naming some class of
tangible objects, such as, “buildings”, “furni-
ture”, “cars”, “jewelry”, or “graphics.” Those
with a bit more liberal sense of ‘design’
might even say something like, “organiza-
tional structures”, “business plans” or
“financial models.”While all of these answers
are as reasonable as they are predictable, I
think that they are wrong, and even if not
wrong, they at least miss the point.
Despite the technocratic and material-
istic bias of our culture, it is ultimately
experiences, not things that we are designing.
Yes, physical objects are often the most tan-
gible and visible outcomes of design, but
their primary function is to engage us in an
experience – an experience that is largely
shaped by the affordances and character
embedded in the product itself. Obviously,
aesthetics and functionality play an impor-
tant role in all of this since they attract and
deliver the capacity for that experience.
But experience is the ultimate – but too
often neglected – goal of the exercise.
If we just focus on aesthetics, at best we
end up with art, and at worst, decoration
that ultimately disappoints. And, if we just
focus on functionality, we end up not raising
our sights higher than utilitarian questions
such as usability and what I will call ‘inter-
face design’. Let me give you a concrete
example of the difference between ‘inter-
face’ and ‘experience’ design.
There are two things you need to know
about me: first, I split my time between a
house in Toronto and a cabin north of the
city; second, what gets me out of bed in the
morning is fresh squeezed orange juice.
For years, in the city I had a conven-
tional electronic juice squeezer – the
CitrusMate, shown in Figure 1.
It
worked, but I didn’t like it much.
Especially compared to the manual one
that I had in the country, the Mighty OJ,
shown in Figure 2.
While the juice that each produ