Next time you go into a department store, look for a couple of things: signposts (detailing where items are located throughout the store), cashiers (ready to assist you should you have any questions), and muzak (that oh-so-good, yet oh-so-bad “elevator music”). Do you think you would find them? I imagine so. They’re usually not hard to spot.
The point of this exercise isn’t the visibility/audibility of these things, but their utility in a different sense. These are the elements of the retail experience that don’t serve a “vital” function. They’re not essential to the practice of buying and selling goods. Retail stores could function just fine without signposts, cashiers, and background music. In fact, stores don’t require design in any explicit sense. Yet we expect to see design, regardless of the store we enter.
Our societal notion of a good retail store is defined in large part by what has worked (and what hasn’t) over the course of iterative experience design. In other words, the elements I highlighted above are so engrained into our definition of a contemporary retail store (and how we interact with it) that we measure other retail experiences by them, even when two stores are functionally the same.
These are the sorts of elements which make up ambient user experience, the experiences that subtly align with user expectations. Ambient user experience is design applied to the context in which users get things done in the course of using a website. Providing a good experience on our websites, in turn, means incorporating elements of ambience. If done correctly others will catch on, and your experience will define ones that follow.
How we experience
Even “novel” ways of interacting with the world are themselves tempered by previous experiences. My own assumptions regarding retail stores are colored from my upbringing in suburban America. There is an implicit agreement between me and the culture I live in, that we both understand what it means to be a retail store.
If a pair of scissors works, it works. Why then, are there 25 kinds of scissors available at my local office-supply store? The answer isn’t straightforward. Experience designers are tasked with more than just making sure a product is functionally sound; they must design for the context in which that product is used, its interaction possibilities.
If an interaction doesn’t account for these kinds of possibilities, the user is forced to account for them—users are forced to answer their own questions. Good ambient experience is based on expectation, accounting for these kinds of things before they’re evident.
A good source of what makes up ambient user experience is Yelp.com, a website where people post emotionally charged responses to local businesses. Not surprisingly, users of Yelp don’t comment on the specific functionality of a restaurant or local business; they comment on their overall experience. In an excerpt from Magdalena C.’s 5–star review of Studio 924 Hair Designs, she says:
The people working there are funny, friendly, listen really carefully, and aren’t afraid to ask questions and make sure they understand what you want. You get a scalp massage with every haircut, and the products they use work well and smell wonderful.
Magdalena C.’s review on Yelp.com
Magdelenda doesn’t care about the quality of the scissors that her stylist uses, nor does she name the hair care products that line Studio 924’s shelves. Instead, her haircare experience is colored by something altogether tangential to the elements that deliver a functionally good haircut.