Designing the Digital Experience. How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love

Citation

McNicol, S. (2010), "Designing the Digital Experience. How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love", New Library World, Vol. 111 No. 7/8, pp. 359-360. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074801011059993

David Lee King is a librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee Country Public Library in Kansas, but he also writes an excellent blog (www.davidleeking.com) on emerging trends in library web sites and digital technology. In this book, he writes in the same accessible and interesting style, focusing on experience design and its role in building web sites. This is not a book about technical specifics, nor a step‐to‐step guide to building a web site, rather it is a book to make librarians and others, including web developers and marketing professionals, think more deeply about how they design an experience so web site users are “enchanted and captivated.”

The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the structural focus, examining three models of building the user experience as well as usability and information architecture. The second section explores community focus, in particular, the way in which memorable experiences are created via online participation and communities. After explaining the concepts, the chapters in this section examine how digital tools such as blogs, wikis, and podcasting can be used to create digital experiences; ways to invite users to participate in online conversations; and the potential of social networking sites.

The final part of the book addresses customer focus. In this section, there are number of examples of good practice in customer‐focused web site design from a range of industries. The use of personas, customer journey mapping and merit‐badging are among the useful techniques described. In the last chapter of the book David Lee King ties together the ideas discussed by describing how a web site might look if it included the three types of focus. Inevitably, some aspects of any book about digital technologies will quickly date. However, the author plans to post any updated information related to the book on his blog.

As libraries become ever more user centred, the concept of experience design, is a valuable technique for anyone involved in planning the future development of services. In the area of web site design, it particularly useful, as it is all too easy to lose sight to the remote user.

This book introduces many appealing and thought‐provoking ideas about how experience design might be adopted in a digital environment to enhance the customer experience, thus encouraging repeat uses and creating “evangelisers.” I would advise librarians, or anyone else involved in web site design, to read David Lee‐King's book and discuss his ideas, both within their own team and more widely via his blog.