Experience Design and existential overwhelm

The existential overwhelm of the modern world is that it provides an inexhaustible supply of things that seem worth doing.

Experience design exists within this context of infinite possible experiences available to the user. Mostly, users are vaguely aware of this lingering in the background.

But some product experiences make this explicit.

Facebook, for example, is an efficient way to stay informed about events you might like to attend. It’s also a guaranteed way to hear about more events you’d like to attend than anyone possibly could attend. For even the least superficial, most functional user of Facebook, there is no escape from FOMO.

Perhaps this is an inevitability of connecting users to others and offering those users choices.

But it strikes me as fertile ground for design innovation.

How might we design experiences that allow users to take joy in missing out?

To revel in the experience of having chosen one option and determinedly cut off all others.

Sources

• Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman