Contexts aren’t static—conditions within them change. Sometimes, these conditions are physical, such as weather-related conditions and noise levels. Conditions can also be intangible, such as political uprisings, celebrations, or a zombie attack. While contexts are comprised of things like people, resources, and non-human actors that interact within them, a context’s behavior can change, affecting all those inside the setting. To design outcomes that will effectively support activities in different conditions, designers must consider not just what a context is but also ways it can behave.
Context-specific characteristic aspects.
The physical spaces, ideas, and prevailing attitudes of a place and time affect experience design scenes.
A place and time where an experience design scene takes place.
Physical and social conventions that govern settings.
The dimensions of physical spaces where experience design scenes take place.
People and objects in a context that are not the user.
Materials available for use in a setting.
Designers who research a context’s behavior discover what conditions take place in different settings. Because conditions in a setting can be widely different from time to time, defining conditions helps designers know how to design products, services, and systems that will work in harmony with conditions and, for some cases, resist these conditions.
Election Day in Schools: An elementary school gym is typically filled with children playing games, but on an election day, voting machines line the gym and citizens enter the school to cast their votes.
Power Outage in Summer: The power is out in the building and it is getting very hot because the air conditioning is not working. Normally, the temperature in the building is cool enough where people can wear business attire and not sweat profusely.
City Streets: Normally, people walk through city streets to get to work and to shop, during a block party, the streets are shut down to car traffic and people have parties, during political upheaval, people may throw bottles and burn cars in protest.
References and sources that support the inclusion of this Aspects of Experiences for Design component.
