Introduction: Place-Based Experience Design
Think about when you last went to a theme park, a national park, or a restaurant. Why did you choose the location you did? What about it was meaningful? How do you feel about it now? Odds are, you selected this location because it promised to create an experience—one that was full of awe, joy, thrills, or other emotions—that’s experience design with a big “E”: a service that created moments worth remembering.
Experience designers create environments, actors, apps, objects, lighting, and sounds that make memories. Students who produced the projects below were challenged to create an experience where participants would physically move from one site to another and use a companion website to enhance their visit. Each team was asked to include the following Place-Based Experience steps in their project work (taken from the assignment sheet).
- Discovery: The participant discovers your experience by scanning a QR code or finding a link on a printed or digital thing.
- Introduction: The participant uses their phone to view a web page introducing the story. It directs them to physically move to a location to discover Part 1 of the story.
- Story Part 1: The participant scans a QR code or inputs a link that launches a web page that contains Story Part 1. It directs them to physically move to a location to discover Part 2 of the story.
- Story Part 2: The participant scans a QR code or inputs a link that launches a web page that contains Story Part 2. It directs them to physically move to a location to discover the story’s Conclusion.
- Story Conclusion: The participant scans a QR code or inputs a link to launch a web page containing the Conclusion. It directs them to physically move to a location to discover Part 2 of the story.
Learners in IMS 354: Intermediate Interaction Design created the projects linked on this page in just two weeks. While you cannot use the QR codes (some projects didn’t reach physical implementation), you can still see each project’s online component below.
