Small Town in Experience Research

In the language of software development, there’s much ado about the idea of User Experience Design. User Experience Design, according to Miklos Phillips, is “The process of creating products that provide meaningful and personally relevant experiences.” User Experience Research, in the broadest sense of the term, plays a very large role in that design process. Without sticking closely to what user activities and needs are, product designers and developers cannot create viable products. Curious, I decided to take an online course. Midway through the first week’s lessons I began to realize that the words “Inspired by” take on meaning here. Difficult to ignore was that a large portion of the material on user experience research either resembled or sounded familiar to the language of the social sciences, particularly of sociological research. Important to note that some of the material being circulated about user experience research, seems to have origins in the work of American Sociologist and Researcher, Arthur J. Vidich, writing in 1958, along with Sociologist Joseph Bensman Small Town in Mass Society, and the many works on industrial sociology that followed. Making this connection is pretty significant. In some way, seeing the similarity in the language on user experience research, and being able to tie that in with the work of Vidich and Bensman speaks to the ongoing relevance of social research, and the ongoing significance of what it means to understand.