Experience Design: A Holistic Approach

Geraldine Garrido, MFA ’03

case study

My philosophical and visual research is based on a holistic approach towards new Media. Holistic thinking means to consider parts which interact and create a whole. Holistic thinking in regards to communication also means to consider man and his senses. Our senses define the edge of consciousness. The senses feed shards of information to the brain like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. As J.Z. Young describes: “it may be a great part of the secret of the brain’s powers is the enormous opportunity provided for interaction between the effects of stimulating each part of the receiving fields. It is this provision of interacting-places or mixing-places that allows us to react to the world as a whole to much greater degree than others animals can do”.

My intention is to holistically explore the human senses and their relationship with the perception and experience of information. My process maps the journey I made by exploring and researching different theories about systems thinking. This is my understanding of how these pieces can fit together to create meaningful communication.

Design creates meaningful relationships within information, and this creates experience: understanding these relationships as something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through. New media brings us the opportunity to add something new to the above “whole”. This is possible because of the opportunity of taking advantage of the simultaneous relationships of more than one medium. This process is made by simple pieces of information that relate and create complex structures of knowledge. This is reflective of how we think and learn. The result of this combination is an understanding and experience of information. A stronger sense and relation of thought and emotion through interaction and interfaces.

Keywords: buddhism, experience design, perception