Creating something on the web, for print, a movie, a game, a text, a song, a car, a meal or a house has one thing in common: you create it for people. The process is all about designing something so it can be consumed or used in the best way possible by the users/consumers. The best way can be defined as the easiest and most fun or least boring experience for those people. Designing is all about getting the audience/user and selecting the most efficient method of getting there. It is all about removing the distractions and enhancing the core elements.

If you look around on the web for articles on experience, interaction design, information design and all other kinds of design that is used as a medium to deliver a message or experience you see one thing in common. It is all based on anecdotes, past examples, user research that compares methods etc. but never delivers a real scientific connection to the brain, the place where the experience is processed. Many try to abstract the brain and many times we hear stories about evolution and tasks of humans in the prehistory but a real scientific connection to the brain of these days does not exist. All research on this subject is thus speculation and all based on common sense and mainly philosophical in nature. The people with the best and most logical arguments win.

You can see this search for internet design if you look back in the past when it was still new and when there were no rules. Suddenly somebody stands up and basically said: This chaos does not work, we need order! Here are some rules that seem to work. That person in internetworld was Jakob Nielsen and his rules are now regarded as archaic. The result was that some rules were overused and it’s why most sites use the same structure and layout. The next wave was all about the person and imagination again, creating rich internet applications in for example flash that delivered game and video like ‘experiences’. People where overwhelmed with all the magic but the message did not always get across. Now it is the era of web 2.0 with new philosophies of getting back to basics with advanced AJAX sites. All is about creating a smoother experience with the least possible distractions. (37signals is a big example of this movement) Every movement is an evolution on technology and getting it. Every movement will create a countermovement which will again explore a new perspective and create new rules.

You can also see these movements in architecture, television media, fashion, music, industrial design, art etc. It is all about movements and countermovements. It is the basic premise of design. It has to evolve. New ideas have to be formed.

But this is all based on trial and error. Where are the theories that look at the brain directly and define the best way of designing for people directly? After talking to my cousin who studies psychology I discovered that psychology does not have a branch that tries to explain or find the experience. Psychology is mainly concerned about finding anomalies in behaviour and finding the error in the correct part of the brain. In other words trying to understand the brain by looking at what is happening where. The anomalies are to be explained and the best method of curing is to be found. An other big part is statistics, explaining mass behaviour by numbers. Psychologists know too little of the brain to explain how we experience things. The consciousness remains the biggest mystery. It is there because we experience it but we can’t measure it from the outside. So the experience can never be fully understood… The only way to understand it is to try out what works and what does not. The end goal of understanding it is never reached because we are the consciousness that experiences it.

Ok, if evolution is the only way for finding the best way of designing, how can we speed it up to get better experiences sooner? Well the first step I see which is mostly unused is combining knowledge of different areas of design. Many areas of designing still have to discover what others have known for years. Look at experience design which was first discovered by architecture (maybe one of the oldest form of design) and in the modern days by gaming and now webdesign. I now try to look at serious games which combines educational design with game and experience design. The education market begins to discover what others have known for years. What can industrial design, fashion design, art, cooking etc teach us in our area of design? For example can the recipe of Big Macs for reaching mass markets be adapted for online media?

I think the future of design is one universal type of design with general ways of thinking which can be adapted for anything we use or consume. Away with the the big walls! The times of synergy of design are coming!