designing for life experience (UX ➜ LX)

I work in ‘user experience’ design. Despite what it sounds like, we don’t actually design experiences. We design for experience. We use products and services to choreograph the minds of other people, often at scale.

Unfortunately, a lot of user experience designers use this skill to coerce sales, whip votes, maximize screen time, or worse. I love this work, but I have to admit, our methods have many blindspots and can easily be used to exploit people.

As I reflect on global injustices, climate change, geopolitical conflicts, and the impact of technology, I'm compelled to ask: which way is true north for experience design? In what direction should my peers and I be developing to maximize positive impact? If I can help it, I’d like to avoid a future where designers are just getting better and better at manipulating people.

Some have pointed out that my field shares the term ‘user’ with drug dealers. That lands, though it feels a bit alarmist. I think the real issue lies in how ‘user’ suggests we care about people only as long they’re using our stuff. If you’re working on a dating app, designing for ‘users’ means prioritizing profiles, notifications, swipes and matches over lasting relationships.

Some have put forward broader design methods, like Inclusive Design, Ethical Design, Regenerative Design, and Design Justice. All this work moves in a better direction, targeting some of our blindspots directly.

Recently, in conversation with organizers of the upcoming Compassion + Product summit taking place in SF, I’ve been tinkering with how we might include a broader view of experience to help us design more compassionate products. Let’s get into it.

the field of ‘life experience’

The diagram below shows what our playing field could look like when we broaden from ‘user experience’ to ‘life experience’. The idea is to design with respect for all living things existing in the past, present, and future. It’s a big scope.

The red dot at the bottom of this plot represents the ‘user experience’ majority case: designing a product for specific, target humans in the moment of use. This is what I and many UX designers do professionally, often ignoring how our work has influence beyond that moment and that specific identity of that specific individual. We need to widen and move upward on the graph.

Expanding horizontally along the bottom of the diagram, we might do more to respect and personalize to an individual’s history. We might also consider our impact on that individual’s life experience in the weeks, months, and even years to come.

Expanding vertically on the diagram, we could consider how our product affects more than that individual. People who source materials and assemble the product, for example. Or animals who live in ecosystems where the materials come from. Even future generations of living beings who don’t exist yet.

Okay, okay. I know what you’re thinking. The scale of this is massive. It’s too big!

How could anyone possibly design for the infinite proliferation of consequences that come from every single choice? That would be paralyzing for any project. Let’s be real: It’s hard enough to wrangle our current systems to include marginalized humans at this point, let alone future generations of fungi.

While we do need to target specific groups to create effective products and meet our practical objectives, that doesn’t mean we can’t consider the broader field of life experience. The people working factory floors, the coral reefs, insects… they all matter too. We should at least be keeping them in mind.

Moving from UX to LX is about embracing context. First, let’s expand our mindset to nurture compassion for all those affected by our work. From there, let’s expand who we’re actively considering in our design process. Eventually we’ll find opportunities to recenter away from the already privileged and launch products that prioritize an underserved area of the map.

What would a product look like if it were designed specifically for those who have been systematically marginalized for centuries? Or a product designed to protect struggling insects in the present day? Or what about a product that was designed to respectfully carry ancient knowledge 100 years into the future?

We may not currently have the systems and incentives to fully address the whole field, but I suspect we’re missing a lot of opportunities for compassionate design because we don’t look at histories and horizons enough. To start, how about once per project?

ex: lavender aromatherapy spray

I was chatting with Carson Kelly from Compassion 2.0 about using this LX framework as an organizing principle for next week’s event. All of a sudden, he pulled out a bottle of lavender aromatherapy spray and asked how I might design it for ‘life experience’. Let’s give it a try!

Typical ‘user experience’ design would focus on optimizing Carson’s subjective experience while using the product. How does he release the spray? How much should he use at a time? What does it smell like? How does it make him feel? How long does it last? Is it easy to put the cap back on?

Now let’s explore this example on the larger axes of ‘life experience’. Moving slowly up the life axis, we could ask how the people who live with Carson might be affected by it. Next, we’d explore the impact on pets, plants, and other living beings within range.

Now expanding horizontally across the time axis, we might ask what immediate outcomes and long-term effects may result. We could inquire into long-term health effects for all the living things mentioned above. We might also consider the long-term environmental impact of people releasing this spray at scale.

And what about the life experience of those farming the lavender, distilling the oil, and assembling the product? What is the present moment and long-term effect on their lives? And what about on the lavender plants themselves?

Respecting the history of aromatherapy may also yield interesting opportunities for better, more compassionate design. What traditions and cultures have used aromatherapy in the past, including lavender specifically? What was their life experience like? What were the use cases? What values did they hold? What rituals and myths were at play? How might we bring their knowledge into the modern age in a respectful and useful way?

Again, we may not be in a position to fully address all these big questions, but just thinking about them is a useful start. Already we’ve surfaced many opportunities to increase this product’s compassion for life experience. We’ve also shed light on blindspots and potential unintended consequences.

so, what is a compassionate product?

We might think of a compassionate product as one that respects and creates a net improvement in life experience. Carson’s lavender spray is compassionate if it’s something that improves his life experience, but not if it’s at the expense of others. Knowing this, I think he would feel even better about using it, too. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Unfortunately, this is where we keep messing up. We create useful, delightful, and beautiful experiences for some while leaving others out, causing harm to non-human life forms, disrespecting cultures, and eroding the atmosphere.

In my own portfolio, I’ve been able to expand horizontally on the time axis over the years. I focus on mindfulness and wellness projects, and I’ve been getting better and better at designing for larger time scales. I’ve learned to modernize traditional practices with care, personalize designs to people’s history, create meaningful experiences, and become more intentional about long-term wellbeing.

I haven’t done as great a job expanding vertically. Thankfully, I’ve met some incredible academics, designers, and entrepreneurs who’ve taught me a lot about designing for marginalized people, sustainability, regeneration, biodiversity, justice, and more. I still have much to learn, but it’s okay that I haven’t figured it all out yet.

We don’t all need to do everything, as long as we each do our part. It’s easy to feel small in light of this incomprehensibly massive ocean of life experience. The LX framework can help us stay in a larger context, asking better questions, like “what might the effects of this be on future generations?” or “should this even exist at all?” Maybe it can even help us redefine the very concept of a ‘product’ to empower more regenerative, equitable economic models.

Biocentric means considering all life forms to have inherent value when taking action in the world. An approach to design that maps this view to the long arc of time echoes how buddhists serve all beings and indigenous people celebrate interdependence.

May the next generation of products bridge divides, restore natural ecosystems, and address all living things equitably. We can and should reach for something beyond tickling each other’s brains. There’s an opportunity here for us to deepen the vast tapestry of life itself.

---

This framework is a work in progress. I welcome reflections and feedback in the comments section below. For those attending Compassion+Product 2023 next week - I look forward to revising and deepening this framework in collaboration with you. Gratitude to Carson Kelly, Jesse Fleming, Krista Howarth, Matt Wellman, and Aadila Chand for their contributions.