Design Futures Trend

Bridging Digital and

Physical Experiences
Meredith Davis

This is one of a series of briefing People transition across devices, environments, and activities in
papers on trends shaping the
context for design in the coming continuous communication and service activities. Users expect
decade. It is intended to inform
design professionals and educators
technology to provide seamless, unified experiences, even when
of processes and concepts adressed moving among messages and services from different sources.
by successful design practices.
New technological platforms amplify experiences in the physical
world but also create gaps among devices and diversify the inter-
active behaviors required of users.
 Consumers toggle between the digital and the physical. A study of more than
2,000 consumers by Salesforce found that 80 percent researched products
online, even when they fully intended to make their purchases in brick-and-
mortar stores. Consumers check in for a flight or doctor’s appointment, order
groceries, summon a ride (perhaps in a driverless car), and book a stay in a
stranger’s house from the convenience of a smartphone anywhere at any time.

Today’s digital experiences, therefore, are embedded within larger activities

through which people interact with their social and physical world. Under-
stood through this expanded framework, experiences mediated by design
include what users do before and after their interactions with technological
screens. It is in the gaps between online and offline environments, between
devices, and between related service providers that users often lose support,
unnecessarily repeat actions, or miss information important to completing a
task. These moments interrupt the continuity of the brand, product, or service
experience. Such circumstances will only accelerate as technology takes over
more everyday activities. The challenges for designers, therefore, are to antic-
ipate experience gaps for diverse users and to overcome them as simply and
seamlessly as possible.

See also: It is also crucial for designers to develop integrated systems—ecologies of

Trend — Aggregation products and services that cross different devices and service providers. The
and Curation variety in these relationships makes them especially challenging, requiring
new strategies and collaborations. Platform design, the set of components
and protocols through which companies and organizations deliver services to
customers via applications, supports rapid response to changes in the service
ecology by the organization or third-party collaborators.

Evidence of the trend in practice

Click-and-collect — In click-and-collect experiences, consumers purchase
items online for pick up in physical locations. Nearly one-third of all con-
sumers used click-and-collect during the last holiday season. At the same
time, 69 percent of those consumers also bought something else when they
went to the store to pick up online purchases, and 36 percent bought some-
thing in an adjacent store. This is good news for brick-and-mortar retailers
who fear losing sales to online services.

However, there can be areas of friction in click-and-collect systems that break

continuity in the buying and brand experiences. Online inventory informa-
tion can be inaccurate, images misleading, store parking unavailable, and
hours of operation inconvenient. These shortfalls present design opportu-
nities. Curbside is an app through which consumers order online at partic-
ipating stores. Email notifies them that orders are ready (usually within 40
minutes) and employees bring purchases to the curb, eliminating parking
and store navigation. Curbside customers visit participating stores 2.5 times
more frequently than other shoppers.

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 2

 Online giant Amazon uses lockers in its recently acquired Whole Foods
stores to deliver customer orders of any products, avoiding the risk of porch
theft for working people who are not at home during the day to receive pack-
ages. This service allows busy consumers to combine package pickup with
grocery shopping.

In-store experiences — The Google Shopper Marketing Council indicates

that one in three smartphone shoppers would rather use their phones than ask
a salesperson for information. Companies, therefore, pay increasing attention
to the in-store experience as an extension of online research. Home improve-
ment store Lowes, for example, offers an app through which customers find
product information and confirm that the product is in stock. The app des-
cribes the aisle and shelf location of the product in a nearby store, as well as a
map of the quickest in-store route for picking up all items. The route really
matters when customers are pushing heavy carts loaded with building mater-
ials. Lowes employees use the same app in serving customers who prefer face-
to-face interactions, rather than passing them off to an employee in another
department. The company is testing an augmented reality in-store navigation
system that directs customers’ real-time movement in finding products.

See also: Augmented, virtual, and mixed reality — Practical applications of aug-
Trend — Making Sense mented reality impose computer-generated text and images on real-world/
in the Data Economy real-time settings for viewing on smartphones and other mobile devices.
Tourism applications add information, objects, and simulations to the ex-
perience of historic and archaeological sites. Cities use augmented reality in
pedestrian wayfinding, showing access to public transportation and points of
interest. Sportscasts impose graphics and statistics on live events, enhancing
the fan experience. Architects add buildings to the landscape to help clients
envision projects. In these examples, the digital adds to rather than leads to
the physical experience.

IKEA has long been technologically sensitive, incorporating wireless charging

into its furniture and creating lighting that responds to any smart home sys-
tem.IKEA Place is a smartphone app that virtually places any of 2,000 IKEA
products in the home. An advancement over the company’s 2012 augmented
reality app, the recent version (developed in partnership with Apple) allows
users to move the object around the room. Scanning the home floor first en-
sures that the item appears proportional in size to other objects in the room,
solving the problem of fit. At 98 percent accuracy, the fidelity of these features
builds buyer confidence that physical reality will match what they imagine,
whether ordering online or purchasing in the store.

Educational applications of augmented reality overcome some of the gaps

between learning at home and in school. Using the HP Reveal app (formerly
Aurasma), students can scan a page of their homework assignments and the
system will launch a video of their teacher helping them through the problem
all the way to the solution. Scanning an image on a student’s classroom desk
prompts pre-recorded words of encouragement from a parent. For hearing-
impaired students, online videos that use sign language augment vocabulary
flashcards. These and other HP Reveal features can help maintain

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 3

 a support system for students as they traverse the gaps between the two phys-
ical environments.

Although content for virtual reality technology is currently limited, there

are applications that go beyond entertainment. NC State University Graphic
Design Professor Dr. Derek Ham, in collaboration with the National Civil
Rights Museum, created “I Am a Man,” a VR experience that places the viewer
in the 1960s. Viewers “walk” with peaceful demonstrators on a sidewalk along
a Memphis street patrolled by army tanks, and arrive at the Lorraine Motel as
shots ring out, assassinating Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.. Ham’s work was
supported by Oculus Launch Pad, a scholarship for content creators to help
VR reach a wider audience.

Mixed or hybrid reality exists along a continuum between the completely

real and the completely virtual. Unlike augmented reality that overlays virtual
objects on the real world, mixed reality anchors them in the real environment,
allowing users to interact with them. In other cases, mixed reality begins with
the virtual world and overlaps real objects. Microsoft’s HoloLens aligns real-
time, three-dimensional data with a job site by overlaying holographic models
on the physical environment. Architectural clients can walk through a Sketch-
Up model in HoloLens, in order to gain a better understanding of the implica-
tions of design decisions.

Core concepts and principles

See also: Experiences, not objects — Shelley Evenson, managing director for strategy
Trend — Accountability at Fjord, described the user experience cycle: The user enters the experience
for Anticipating Design through a successful first impression that attracts attention and captures the
Outcomes imagination; Orientation follows, providing a preview of what is possible.
Starbucks customers, for example, learn how to order coffee by watching and
listening to counter interactions with others ahead of them in line. This is by
design. A compelling interaction not only delivers something of value in ways
that are delightful and informative but also representative of the organization
providing the product or service. The language of Starbucks baristas—grande
and venti rather than medium and large, for example—reinforces the special
nature of the product. This brand language and behavior is embedded in the
system, so when Starbucks customers come back or go to another Starbucks,
they have an equivalent experience. Over time, consistency in the quality of
the product and service experience retains customers. And eventually, cus-
tomers actively advocate for the brand.

While the typical Starbucks experience takes place entirely inside a physical
environment carefully managed through design, the challenge in most of
today’s digital-to-physical experiences is that they play out over both time
and space. The system must maintain consistent success without dropping
support for users as they move from one stage of the experience cycle to the
next. And in most cases, digital-to-physical services must accommodate
much greater variation in the motives and behaviors of users than those of
the average coffee drinker.

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 4

 connect and attract
the initial connection with
compelling the person and using that
captures contact to make an effective
users’
imaginations and affective impression

advocate
the person actively reverberating orienting orient
you just helps users
communicates their have navigate
the overview or preview of
satisfaction to others to try this the world what’s available or possible,
allowing exploration and
supporting the early stages
extend and retain of learning
the person comes back
for more as their expect-
ations are raised — at the generative embedded interact
promise become
same time a significant level more good part of the completion of valuable
of loyalty and leverageable things users’ lives or valued activities while
relationships are achieved delighting the senses, skilling,
and establishing expectations
about the overall content of
the encounter

Shelley Evenson and Hugh Dubberly

Experience Cycle,
The Experience Hugh
Cycle, Dubberly
Interactions and Shelley Evenson
Magazine
Interactions magazine; May 2008

It is important for college design students to pay attention to the full cycle
and to understand that designing for experience is really about people’s
goal-oriented behavior, not about objects and spaces. This means research
and methods that focus on people’s activities are paramount in designing
support for satisfying experiences.

Touch points — Touch points are any type of contact or interaction between
a goal-oriented user and a company or organization. The user or the organi-
zation initiates these interactions in a variety of digital and physical channels.
Effective touch point experiences allow the user to acquire information, in-
teract with products, engage in services or activities, and gain feedback that
affirms or redirects their behavior along the path. Touch points are frequently
decision-making moments through which the user advances toward the sat-
isfaction of a goal. With respect to the experience cycle, touch points should
deliver the right experience at the right time.

Designers typically represent the touch points of an experience through a

user-journey map, which captures discrete user decisions and interactions
from thinking about information, products, and services to the actions nec-
essary to complete a task. These maps are different from concept maps that
identify the components of a system or site maps that show the organization
of online content. Journey maps reflect particular users’ perspectives, often
defined through personas or extreme users whose paths are likely to vary.
While it is tempting to show a smooth journey from start to finish, the best
maps also show points of user confusion and the consequences of error. In
mapping digital-to-physical experiences, it is especially important to think
about gaps where users lose support or experience friction in the transition
from one environment to the next.

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 5

 Leverage points are places where a small amount of effort produces a positive
change in the overall function of the system or experience of the user. For
example, providing feedback that confirms a step in the process has been
completed—email saying that an order has been received—makes the user
more accurate and confident in proceeding to the next step of the experience.
In identifying every touch point, user-journey maps allow designers to visu-
alize the cascading consequences of making design changes at any single
point in the system.

See also: Touch points are also critical to a brand strategy. They identify places for
Trend — Resilient introducing the organization and its purposes; confirming that interactions
Organizations are with the company or organization, despite moving from one communica-
tion channel to another; and maintaining continuity of the brand experience.
Increasingly, these touch points are conversational; the interactions between
users and the system are two-way, and involve natural language rather than
point-and-click responses. Empathy and feedback are built into the develop-
ment of intelligent systems, which learn from individuals over time.

Competencies:
College student competencies:

• Students should analyze people’s needs, wants, values,
and patterns of behavior, using a variety of human-cen-
tered research methods and media. They should observe
activities and account for a variety of perspectives on the exe-
cution of tasks in transitions from digital to physical environ-
ments. Students should consider findings of other researchers
who have studied similar experiences and look for analogies in
other types of activities. They should identify “work-arounds”
through which users overcome problems in existing products
and services. Roleplaying may be helpful in understanding
users’ points of view and in creating intelligent systems that
anticipate preferences and behaviors.

• Students should identify ecologies of related information,

products, and services that support people in achieving a
goal. Their analyses of experience should be comprehensive in
addressing the full experience cycle and reflect a hierarchy of
components for various users and purposes. They should iden-
tify experience gaps where users lose support, unnecessarily
repeat tasks, and/or lack information or feedback. Students
should identify related products, services, and environments
that may be outside the system to be designed and describe
how they relate to the experience.

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 6

 • Students should describe, analyze, and propose the tech-
nologies and environments necessary to support various
kinds of activities associated with the pursuit of a goal.
They should declare what role technology plays in the overall
experience and how it is matched to user behavior. They should
identify network effects—that is, the positive outcomes for users
that result from the number of people using the system—as well
as the platforms that best support various types of activities.
Students should identify the limits of these technologies and the
gaps they create. They should identify alternate and redundant
strategies for addressing these gaps.

• Students should document and map peoples’ journeys in

their interactions with people, places, things, and/or ser-
vices, as well as moments where system feedback confirms
successful progress toward the completion of a task.
Students should use appropriate media (video, photography,
maps, diagrams, and interviews) in analyzing and describing
experiences. Representations should include inputs into the
system, processes that transform inputs into outputs, and feed-
back through which users regulate their own behavior and the
state of the system.

• Students should design for important touch points or in-

stances of friction where people change or lose support for
continuous experiences. Students should prototype solutions
to digital-to-physical problems in ways that anticipate the con-
sequences of decisions about the design of various touch points.
Students should view the components of the system as inter-
dependent and dynamic in their relationships, acknowledging
that a change in one touch point will have implications for the
rest of the system.

Professional continuing education should address:


• Building ecologies of information, products, and services that
respond to users’ needs for continuous experiences;

• Exploring partnerships among related service providers;

• Accommodating people’s need to curate and customize a suite

of products and services in the pursuit of goals; and

• Developing technological platforms in support of continuous

experiences.

Design Futures Trend: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences 7

 Resources
Aguera y Arcas, B. (2010). Augmented Reality Maps. TED Talk.

Atzmon, L. and Boradkar, P. (2017). Encountering Things: Design and the The-
ories of Things. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Deloitte Insights. (2018). “Digital Reality: The Focus Shifts from Technology
to Opportunity.”

Dubberly, H. (2017). “Connecting Things: Broadening Design to Include

Systems, Platforms, and Product-service Ecologies.” Encountering Things:
Design and the Theories of Things. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Dubberly, H. and Evenson, S. (2010). “Designing for Service: Creating an

Experience Advantage.”

Fjord. (2017). “What is Data + Design?”

Forlizzi, J. (2008). “The Product Ecology: Understanding Social Product Use

and Supporting Design Culture.” International Journal of Design, Volume 2,
Number 1.

Google. (2018). Google’s Material Design.

Harris, D. (2015). “How Brands Can Bridge the Divide between Digital and
Physical.” Creative Bloq.

LinkedIn. (2018). “2018 Workplace Learning Report: The Rise and Repsonsi-
bility of Talent Development in the New Labor Market.”

Microsoft. (2018). “What is mixed reality?”

AIGA Design Futures Trends ©2018

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