Adventures in Experience Design

Introduction

by Carolyn Chandler

“Too much talking, not enough doing.” That was the feedback that woke me up. It was my third quarter giving a class in User Experience Design at The Starter League in Chicago, and I realized that my lecture-heavy lessons were weighing down the beginners in the class.

Design is notoriously hard to teach in shorter blocks of time. So much of design happens in the mind, where nobody can see it. It’s not just about skills and sketches, but about gaining a deep and empathetic understanding of others, about taking in the context of problems, about knowing when to fight for an idea, and when to give it up. How do you explain that?

I began to tinker with running activities meant to create those connections in the brain, ...